


Wings in the Dark

by AngelDesaray



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Acquaintances to Enemies (Briefly) to Friends to Lovers, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Angst and Tragedy, Blood Drinking, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Human/Vampire Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Language, Major Character Injury, More tags as story is written, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, POV Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Past Character Death, Past Violence, Protective Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Psychological Trauma, Reader-Insert, Scary Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Temporary Character Death, Trauma, Vampires, Violence, vampire reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 70,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29194620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelDesaray/pseuds/AngelDesaray
Summary: An encounter with Captain Levi during placement training for the Scouts leads to a game of cat and mouse between Humanity's Strongest and the new recruit who almost managed to best him in a sparring match.  However, Levi isn't entirely aware of the stakes of their back and forth, intent on discovering what it is about this recruit that makes him so uneasy, even if it sends him spiraling into more dangerous waters within the Walls.Originally posted on Tumblr.
Relationships: Levi & Reader, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Female Reader, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Reader, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/You, Levi Ackerman & Reader, Levi Ackerman/Reader, Levi/Reader
Comments: 60
Kudos: 239





	1. Encounter

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

The sound of new recruits in the midst of combat training filled the air, a cacophony of moving feet, cries of attack, sounds of pain, accelerated heartbeats and the occasional shouted order from a supervisor. The wind was strong enough to blow hair about your face, but not enough to be cutting, the sun beating down from above warm enough to drive away any chill from the wind. The occasional sliding foot kicked dust up into the air, making it hard not to sneeze as your sensitive nose became agitated from all the dust in the air. Your arms were held up in an at the ready stance, but your mind wasn’t entirely on the training that was happening in front of you.

The Survey Corps. At long last, you managed to make it past your training in the Cadet Corps and choose your branch of the military to go into. Despite the high death rate and the negative publicity the Survey Corps got, it had been your clear goal since day one. It was the only place you felt you could go where you might feel useful, where these abilities of yours could finally be put to good use.

Of course, you weren’t through with the training phase quite yet. The Scouts had their own tests to put the new recruits through, unique maneuvers and combat preparation that would also help determine where you were going to go within the regiment. You still had to get past this sorting period, so you didn’t let yourself get celebratory yet.

But still, two years of hard work in the Cadet Corps, learning to readjust, learning your limits, refining mannerisms, careful planning and consideration into your every move.

Of course, that wasn’t what it looked like to your classmates. To them, you were well aware that you were the cold and aloof antisocial bitch that would knock everyone to the ground like they were nothing in the combat training, and always kept everyone at a distance.

It wasn’t that you were hateful, far from it. You just didn’t want to risk anyone getting too close to you while you were in the Cadets. And it wasn’t your fault if the training came too easily for you–you couldn’t help your nature. Hell, most of your focus had gone into holding back and restraining yourself since day one. While you wanted to make an impression and prove your skill and worth in combat, you didn’t want to stand out too much and draw unwanted attention. It had taken ridiculous amounts of concentration and effort, carefully planned throws on tests and combat evaluations, in order to purposely place at sixth in the top ten. Skilled, but not a shining star that would get full attention.

But that first place spot could have easily been yours, if you didn’t have to be so careful about how you presented yourself.

As important as it was to do well in these tests to get properly placed somewhere you and your abilities could be of use, you still had to maintain the front of someone who ranked _sixth_ , not suddenly display all the skill and strength that belonged to someone easily top of the class. Not to mention, you were on a time limit for something far more important to your stay in the cadets for the long run.

This was your grace period to figure out what you needed to do in order to blend in with everyone else. And not just in skill. Your main concern was your food source.

Back in the cadets, in had started as a painful struggle, having to find ways to sneak out without anyone noticing so you could get a proper bite that would last you at least half a month. The cadets had also been your trial by fire to see how well you could handle freshly spilled blood in front of you, though you were painfully aware that particular test was only going to get more difficult when you went out into the field and Titans started eating people.

Right now at the Scouts, though, you didn’t even have escape routes, predetermined, best routes to sneak out and get a drink without anyone noticing. You hadn’t pinned down sleeping schedules for everyone yet, either, so you could figure out who you needed to be wary of when you were trying to sneak out. If you couldn’t find good times to sneak out and the best ways to leave and return undetected, then your time with the Scouts would prove to be painfully short, for your own safety.

And you wanted to stay here as long as possible, for reasons that had taken root deep in your heart.

Of course, you still had to worry about the training and some basic parts of being a Scout, as well. You were still frustrated with yourself for forgetting one of the simplest things–the horses. Of course, you got a painful reminder when you entered the stables and the majority of the horses got nervous and skittish while the rest went wild.

Not everything was easy to you. You now had to find and befriend a horse that you could hopefully keep with you that wouldn’t be afraid of the predator it could sense in you. It was going to take time, and you were certain this oddity about you had already been noticed, but hopefully when you befriended one of the horses, any sparked suspicions would go away.

Then there was the ODM gear. Obviously you could operate it, you wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t. The problem was that your instincts and reflexes could happen faster than the gear could operate. It made it difficult to slow down and operate it properly when you were running on instinct, and even after two years in the Cadets you were still trying to temper your natural instincts to slow down to something the gear could keep up with. Though you had managed in your personal training time to also craft some maneuvers of your own that was more forgiving to your sharp reflexes and instincts, maneuvers that actually required more physical movement and less dependability on the cables. The less you tried to do with the gear and more you did with your own body, the less of a chance you had to screw up a maneuver by going too fast for the gear to execute at a costly moment.

But out of everything in this grace period that was going to be the most difficult, it was the social aspect. You always kept everyone at a distance because you didn’t want anyone to get close enough to find out what you were, or to risk them getting hurt. As such, you usually came off as antisocial or rude, when really it was maddeningly lonely for you. But what else were you supposed to do? You didn’t even want to think of what kind of a disaster could unfold if you allowed yourself to get close to someone, they found out what you were, reacted negatively and then…and then what? What were you supposed to do with a threat to your safety when it was someone you’d grown close to?

You shuddered at the thought every time it wandered into your mind. This was one of your greatest concerns with being around people again, but now, you were in a situation where you were going to have to do the balancing act flawlessly anyway. One thing you had learned watching the Scouts so far was that there was a degree of trust and closeness in the community. Privacy was still a thing, obviously, and you didn’t have to be best friends with everyone…but people had to know you could be trusted, that you would have their backs out in the field. You had to be amicable at the very least with people–you couldn’t keep them all pushed far away or give them a reason to think you might be hiding something. You were going to have to start making friends with your comrades despite your reservations, but you couldn’t quite figure out how to start.

This was what you got for being a hermit living by herself for oh so long before coming back to the surface, back into daylight, back around people–

Your sparring partner shifted, and your eyes refocused slightly on the match in front of you. It seemed he was going to be one of the many who had seen the glazed over look in your eyes and assumed they could get the drop on you because you weren’t paying attention.

Just like everyone else, he was about to find out how wrong he was.

As he charged you, you reacted rather instinctively, grabbing at his arm and sweeping his leg out from under him before sending him to the ground on his own momentum.

“How?” he fumed. “You weren’t even paying attention!”

“You probably shouldn’t assume that of your opponent,” you returned calmly. Just because you’d been lost in your own thoughts didn’t mean you weren’t paying attention.

Your partner wilted slightly, looking dejected, and you had to stop and do some mental math to figure out how long the two of you had been sparring. It was probably best if you let him win this next one. Both so you could break this perfect streak and so he could get a bit of his pride and confidence back. Plus, you’d get to rotate to a new partner, and the cycle would start fresh. He could probably use some time matched more evenly against someone anyway. It wasn’t fair to anyone who got matched with you, even if they didn’t know it.

What were they supposed to do against someone they thought was human, that was anything but?

You fell back into your at-the-ready stance, watching him closely this time to make sure you knew exactly what he was going to do. He came at you again, his feet planted firmly, form practically perfect–

–you shifted one of your feet so that you were standing just a little too wide–

–and this time as he tackled you, he was able to easily knock you off your feet. Not too easily, you made sure there was enough resistance he found it believable, but for the most part, you let him knock you to the ground.

“Yes!” he cried successfully as he sprang back to his feet, the elation of finally receiving a victory causing his blood to rush in your ears. You closed your eyes and took your time getting calmly to your feet, brushing yourself off as you regained control of yourself.

You’d had a brief spike of hunger with his blood pumping so close to you. Thankfully, you had some practice controlling your thirst in these kinds of situations after so long in the Cadets.

While you were getting up, one of your overseers called for a switch in partners now that he had finally won a bought against you. You got to your feet as your partner scurried away in relief, brushing hair from your face as you waited expectantly to see who would be matched up with you this time.

Unfortunately, it seemed _someone_ had caught your throw this time.

Instead of another new recruit stepping in front of you, a well maintained shock of raven hair and sharp pale blue eyes entered your vision as Captain Levi himself approached, his gaze centered solely on you.

You’d known he was helping supervise the new recruits–all the squad leaders and section commanders were rotating through so they could get a feel for the new recruits and see if there was anyone specifically they wanted with them. You hadn’t realized, however, that you’d caught his attention. But instead of looking pleased, he seemed a little irked.

Quickly, you snapped to a salute, body tense for a few moments as you waited to see what he was going to say. You already knew it wasn’t going to be praise.

“Throwing matches doesn’t help anyone,” Levi said bluntly, his sharp gaze fixated on you.

Fuck, he’d noticed that? You supposed anyone paying close enough attention could catch it, but you’d hoped you were being subtle enough your throws would go undetected.

Then again, this was an entirely different field from the Cadets. You were among the true elite, if you were going to put a bit of your bias in there, and if anyone was going to catch on…

You needed to be more careful.

“I felt he would benefit more from a different sparring partner, sir,” you said stiffly. It wasn’t a lie–hell, anyone would do better if they were paired with someone other than you. You didn’t mean for that to sound cocky, but it was the truth. You were naturally designed to outmatch humans.

“You don’t seem to be putting much effort into this training, either. Do you feel it’s beneath you, cadet?” Levi asked, his voice low. Some of your old classmates that had come to the Scouts as well were letting their eyes wander to the scene in the middle of the training field, most likely looking forward to the frigid ‘slacker’ finally get what was coming to her.

“Quite the opposite, sir. Titans aren’t the only threat in the world–you never know when you’ll need training like this,” you countered, meeting his gaze as you gave a reason that you’d once uttered to shut down the dismissal of other cadets for these person on person combat training exercises. You had your own demons these kinds of moves could be used against, but there were also plenty of…unpleasant…people in the world. You never knew when your life would be threatened by another person, and it was in those moments when you would want this kind of training.

Of course, with your reflexes and strength, it was easier to execute them. Your learning process went into learning the techniques, and once you had that down, you really didn’t have much to worry about.

There was a spark of curiosity in Captain Levi’s eyes at your answer–apparently it hadn’t been a wrong one. You recognized the training’s value instead of brushing it off like most people. And most people who did realize its value usually didn’t state it openly like you just had. Maybe you should have cut that last part out.

He still didn’t look pleased, though, which was understandable if his observations had led him to believe you weren’t taking this training as seriously as it should, that you were brushing it off.

“Then you wouldn’t mind showing me what you’ve learned. I’ll expect perfection with that attitude of yours,” Levi said in a flat voice, taking a few more steps until he was standing opposite you. There was a dangerous note in his voice, and you had the feeling he intended to make you take this sparring seriously, with full attention.

“Sir?”

Levi didn’t answer. He fell into an at the ready position across from you, and you realized he wasn’t going to give you time to ask any more questions. He was about to attack, and you had better be ready for it.

You finally dropped the salute that had loosened during your brief conversation, falling back into a similar at the ready position and feeling your attention start to sharpen. Around you, people were turning their attention away from their training to see Captain Levi give the careless newbie a lesson.

A small part of you whispered that perhaps you should let him take you down right out of the gates, have him teach you the lesson and then move on, deal with the fact you’d made a poor impression on the captain of the Elite Squad.

You let out a slow breath, the world snapping into attention as you honed in on your opponent, Humanity’s Strongest.

Something inside you refused to lay down and take it. You were going to at least show him that you had potential. This was your moment to prove that it wasn’t all bravado and charades. You had skill to back it up, you were capable, and you were not some slacker that wasn’t taking any of this seriously. You were here to fight, to help in the push against the Titans,, no matter what anyone thought from their first impression of you. You were here to stay.

Levi’s eyes flashed, and your body instinctively tensed for the oncoming attack as he darted forward with an almost inhuman speed. You clamped down on your instinct to use your truly inhuman speed to step out of the way, instead choosing to block or at least re-direct the blow with his foot with your arm as you went low, ducking under the kick and coming up on his side. Levi was already turning when you were halfway up, and his fist connected with your side, causing you to take a few steps back.

Shit, that _hurt_. He really was going to teach you a lesson to take this seriously, wasn’t he? If you didn’t want to end up beat to hell, you better be ready to show him you were learning.

And after the strength of that blow and the speed of his attack, you were going to have to put some actual effort into this.

Levi was already coming in again with another attack, fist cutting through the space between the two of you. You turned your body aside to avoid it, knee coming up to try and get him in the gut. He knocked it aside with his other arm as you blocked the one that had tried to punch you from coming at you again, grabbing onto his forearm and bringing yourself into his space. You threw a punch of your own, still holding back to avoid seriously hurting him, but he blocked it just as quickly, the two of you grappling up close with a series of punches, blocks, and shifted feet before you decided to break away, fists still up and ready for a pursuit. He kept using his small stature to get under your defenses and go after your weak spots, using momentum and your own weight against you. But you were able to return in kind, upping the effort you put into your offense and defense with every block or failed hit.

You could hear his heart, which had started so steady and calm, starting to pick up from effort and exertion as well–so you weren’t the only one who had started to put effort into this fight. You were both two combatants that rarely found someone on their level to fight, and now here you were.

A voice in the back of your mind screamed to stop and throw the fight before you gave away too much, but you couldn’t stop yourself, your own heart pounding with excitement. When was the last time someone could actually challenge you? Which one of you was actually capable of winning this fight?

Hell, you’d never thought someone human could stand toe to toe with you in basic hand to hand without bringing some dirty tricks to the match, but here you were. As exciting as it was, there was also something strangely…relieving, about it. Reassuring.

Levi’s knee flashed through your vision, and you had to lean back, hands coming down to meet it and stop the assault before it could connect with your chin.

Reflection could come later, right now…well, you should really be throwing this fight, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You kept meeting his attacks and coming in with your own, no matter how much reason screamed at you to stop.

Suddenly, Levi switched tactics, and instead of coming in to hit you, he grappled you to the ground, the two of you now caught in a tussle to see who could pin the other and end this fight. His arm started to snake around your throat, and you quickly placed an arm against your throat to break the incoming hold, dropping your shoulder with hands wrapped around his forearm to throw him over you. He managed to keep his grip for the most part, but he was no longer in the position to choke you out from behind.

His heartbeat, as well as your own, continued to pound in your ears, telling you just how much you both were fighting. This had rapidly changed from a lesson to be taught into a straight up match at some point, both of you fighting for dominance, with not a single peep from the onlookers as both of you started throwing in dirty tactics that looked more like skills learned on the streets than something taught in military training.

He’d landed some solid hits on you, easily bruising your body where he connected, but so had you. Of course, you were still trying to be careful and not hurt him, but the longer this fight went on, the less restraint you showed, because all the while you were testing his limits, seeing how far _you_ could safely go, and you had yet to see a sign that it had been to far.

_At this rate, I wouldn’t mind this being a regular thing. This is exhilarating._

In the scuffle, Levi ended up below you in the middle of a roll, and you took advantage of the position, leg planted firmly behind him near his head, arm grasping his and pulling it up, about to trap him in a position where he wouldn’t be able to move without breaking a limb.

You felt a tingle on the back of your neck as your eyes met.

Levi’s eyes widened in surprise.

Your ears perked at the first sign of whispers among your spectators.

“Is she…gonna beat Captain Levi?”

“I thought he was Humanity’s Strongest?”

“Some random cadet is gonna beat Levi?”

Your heart froze, even as your body kept moving.

He couldn’t hear the whispers, not that you felt he cared much about such a moniker, but you could hear, and you did care. Levi knew he was about to be beat, you could see the flicker of realization in his eyes. And right now, with both of you putting effort into this fight and no attempts to throw from you so far, he might pounce on an opening without seeing it for the throw it was.

Maybe.

Whether that was true or not, this fight had to end, and it had to end one way.

Your grip shifted slightly on his arm, your foot slid slightly to the side, and you changed your weight distribution, giving him a split second window he could still get out of this. And just as you’d hoped, he took full advantage, breaking your grip on his arm and knocking you off balance with your now unsecure stance and uneven weight distribution. As quickly as you’d started to pin him, Levi suddenly leapt on top, his arm pressed hard against your chest as you found yourself flat on your back, wind knocked out of you abruptly by the fast move.

In the brief second before Levi pulled away, you saw disappointment in his eyes.

Right.

This all started because he realized you were throwing fights. And now you’d just thrown the fight with him. Whether or not he knew why was up for debate, but what matters was he _knew_ you threw it at the last second.

Levi got to his feet, brushing dirt off himself with distaste before he stared down at you with a face that looked perfectly controlled, though those eyes of his were gazing at you with a thousand thoughtful emotions that made you uneasy as you sat up.

“Put that effort into sparring with your comrades, and they might learn something,” he said dismissively, then turned and left the field, most likely to go clean himself up.

You got to your feet, expression hidden by hair that had fallen loose in the match. Now that it was over, you were able to think more clearly, and you were chastising yourself thoroughly on the inside for such a stupid move.

Who cared if it had felt exhilarating to spar with someone on even ground? Who cared if you hadn’t wanted to give him the wrong impression of you on what might have been his first time seeing you? Who cared if the feeling of realizing there was someone out there that _wasn’t_ what you were, that could fight you like that, was akin to not feeling so alone for the briefest second?

You shouldn’t have done that. You weren’t supposed to be drawing that kind of attention to yourself. It was sloppy and stupid and you could only see it resulting in trouble. You should have thrown the match far earlier than when you had, you shouldn’t have given everyone the impression that you could take Levi’s title from him.

Because even if it could, even if you were able to best him in a fight, you shouldn’t. Not in public, anyway, where word could spread and people started calling you the strongest instead. It wasn’t right, and the thought made you feel dirty and ashamed.

A vampire shouldn’t have the title of Humanity’s Strongest.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Coming out of the bath with damp hair still hanging on his face and shirt not buttoned up yet, Levi let out a soft sigh and leaned against the wall beside his office window, hand brushing thoughtfully over a nasty bruise he’d gotten in that sparring match from the cadet, his mind lost in thought even as he started carefully buttoning up the shirt.

That…had not turned out like he’d expected it to.

When he saw her throw that match so cleverly after watching her act with such clear distance during the training, he’d been irritated at the thought that she wasn’t taking the training seriously. Or that she might think throwing the fight helped her opponent somehow by making him think they’d won on their own merit. They weren’t going to learn if they were allowed to win. If anything, such a move hurt their progress more than it helped, so he’d intended to put a stop to that thinking before it got too far. Besides, with how carefully she timed and planned that throw, she had to have _some_ kind of real skill she was hiding.

What he couldn’t understand was why she would hold back. Especially now, at the stage where the aptitude shown decided where each recruit would be tasked.

No matter what the reason behind it all, he’d felt a push was necessary to make her step it up and start _trying_. Seeing her standing there appearing not to take any of it seriously had been irksome, and he wasn’t going to let it happen while he was on the training grounds.

As he’d thought, she’d sharpened up when he challenged her. There was no far away glaze in her eyes when he stepped up to spar her, just unbridled focus and determination, perhaps even a bit of excitement. For a moment, he’d despised it because he thought it was because she was one of _those_ , so hell bent on impressing _him_ , everything else be damned. The kind of attitude that got people killed out in the field because they were too busy trying to impress instead of actually learn, that showed people to be nothing more than squabbling children who weren’t taking any of this seriously.

As the fight progressed and she started to show her true strength, though, it started to make more sense.

He could still vividly picture the shift in her demeanor, the glint in her eyes the second before their spar began. How at that moment, he knew he was about to see if she was sitting on true potential and was paying attention, or was just blowing smoke up people’s asses and blowing it all off.

He’d been fully ready to knock her into the dirt in that first strike to knock reality back into her, but that wasn’t what happened. He’d been genuinely surprised when she managed to block and keep up with him, even more with how well she was able to return what he gave her. Quickly he’d abandoned the thoughts of teaching an arrogant cadet a lesson and instead started to prod at her capabilities, intrigued and impressed with what he found. Being able to spar with someone on such even ground was a rarity, and he’d found the experience rather…exhilarating.

She was faster and stronger than she appeared, just like him. She was also quite clever–predictably, considering the care she’d put into throwing her matches–and had clearly been paying attention to the taught techniques. However, when he’d thrown something street learned and not taught by the military, she hadn’t flinched, and pulled a few underhanded street fighting techniques of her own.

Which gave him a peek at her background, as well. If he was to look, he would bet his salary that he would find that she got into some kind of trouble in the past–the illegal kind.

Several of her blows had, clearly, hurt, which told him she wasn’t holding back anymore–at least not as much. A part of him could tell, through their whole fight, that there was still something she was holding back with, just like he was. He hadn’t tapped into that strange power of his, not fully, and she had also kept herself from using her full potential–something tipped off by the fact her attacks had been getting progressively faster and harder. Of course, in a spar, you weren’t _supposed_ to go all out–for example, neither of them were trying to do anything lethal. But even then, she was sitting on something.

Now he was fairly confident the reason she’d been holding back on the others had been to avoid hurting a comrade by accident. That he couldn’t fault her for, but she still shouldn’t have been throwing the fights. They needed to learn, and making them think they’d won didn’t help them.

Of course, there was also the glaring fact of how she’d ended that fight.

He had definitely been shocked the moment he’d realized she was about to pin him. Of course it hadn’t been anywhere in his mind that a younger rookie would beat him in a spar–before today he would have thought that kind of suggestion was madness. But she’d done it, and for the briefest moment, just before she would have pinned him, he saw the faintest red glimmer in her eyes.

Then some kind of realization hit her, she seemed to register she was about to win as well, and she’d shifted. At first, he’d thought she’d simply hesitated, that her unbalance had come from getting inside her own head in the middle of the fight, and he had pounced on that opportunity. There was another part of that moment that was worrisome to him, though.

For some reason, he’d reacted off a survival instinct, even though he was well aware that it was a spar. It hadn’t been a mere moment of ‘I want to win this fight,’ but a split second where he felt like an eagle pinned down by a horned owl, where natural instinct told him if he didn’t break free…

But of course…it had just been a spar, no matter what the novel moment had made him feel for a split second.

Of course, once he had her pinned beneath him, he realized how easy the motion had been–to easy for someone who was a hair’s breath away from being pinned and the fight being over. And he could tell from the look in her eyes, the dulling of that sharp gaze and the distance in her posture, that she’d thrown the fight.

Again.

Of course he was disappointed. The entire spar had started because she’d been throwing matches with her fellow recruits, and at the last second, when she would have pinned even him and proven what she was capable of, she backed off. She held back.

The only two who knew she really won that fight was him, and her.

He knew she’d been holding back the whole time. That she threw at the end. That there was a dangerous edge to her. That even if he went all out, there was a chance she could take him.

Levi looked out his office window, which overlooked the training grounds that were now empty after combat training had finished. Why did she do it? Why did she throw the fight? Why was she hiding her potential instead of showing what she was truly capable of? What did she want to hide, and why was she trying to hide it?

Who was she?

Did she have a power similar to his own?

Did he want her on his squad? That question he was far more unsure about, because while her raw skill alone tempted him to recruit her to the Elite Squad, something stirred uneasily in his gut about her. From the look in her eyes, that glint, that moment of survival instincts kicking in, all the unknowns…

There were too many questions and too many unknowns about her right now. He wasn’t about to act hastily. First, he needed to learn what he could about this new recruit, ask around and keep an eye on her from a distance. Once his questions were answered…

Well, that all depended on what he would find after some digging.


	2. Suspicions

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Levi leaned against the stone wall beside him, arms crossed over his chest and the shade of the roof mostly hiding him from view as he stared pensively out at the open field. The horse training was finished for the days, and the horses were being allowed time to roam in the open field for the time being. One individual, however, was spending some one on one time with a mare, walking through some common techniques to get a horse to trust you.

At first, he’d wondered why she was using such a long rope, since he was fairly certain the distance between a horse and a potential rider during this exercise wasn’t supposed to be that far. Quickly Levi realized that if she got much closer, the horse _was not having it_. It was truly afraid of her, though she appeared to be making some headway, if she was able to lead the horse around on the long rope while the other horses stayed clear.

Horses that had been trained and bred to retain nerves of steel and ignore their fears, especially in the presence of Titans and the chaos of a battle, and apparently all of them were at least skittish around her. That’s what he’d heard from the stablemaster, anyway.

Not a minor detail to be overlooked. And a problem, if she couldn’t get around it. Clearly, though, she was putting in the effort and time to fix it, and she didn’t mind going at the proper pace instead of trying to rush it. From what he’d been able to observe, she was also approaching the situation with an admirable amount of patience, no outward signs of frustration or anger when she reached a setback and had to back up a foot or so on the rope instead of shortening it a little more. Her approach changed slightly each time, too, attempting to adjust to fix whatever she’d done wrong the previous try.

Well, at least she had some positive character traits to be discovered alongside the worrisome fact about the horses he wasn’t going to ignore. So he could give her some merit while his suspicion raised a little more.

“Captain.”

Levi turned at the sound of his title, noticing the individual approaching him from the main building, a file in hand. He snapped a salute when he reached Levi, then held out the file for him to take. “You asked for the file on Cadet Y/N L/N.”

Levi nodded and took the file from him. “Thanks. You can go,” he said in a distracted tone, already opening the file as the soldier walked away.

His eyes scanned the information in the file, which was surprisingly scarce. Her place of residence was formerly Wall Rose, there was no living family, no record as he thought there might be after their spar. She ranked sixth in her class–which didn’t at all match the spar they’d had, and gave further credit to his belief she was purposely holding herself back even when it mattered for placement. Maybe she wanted to avoid the spotlight? She wanted her talents to be recognized, but she didn’t want them front and center since she was still trying to scrape by without her full potential being noticed. She excelled in individual evaluations, especially the physical and instinctual, but seemed to have some problem with others. It was noted in her file that she was a loner and outcast during training, suggesting teamwork might be a point of issue with her. The opinion of her classmates might shed some light on that matter–it could have easily been the other party and not necessarily her that was the issue. Some of her classmates had joined the Scouts as well, if he remembered correctly, so there were some around that could be asked.

Levi reached the end of the file far sooner than he expected.

There weren’t any official documents giving age or place of birth, just an inked in note marking that she was in her early twenties–older than most new recruits, strangely enough–and the name of the town she was born in. There weren’t any legal documents, and no visible records of her existence before she started leaving a trail behind in Wall Rose two years ago, with a rented space in her name and her official application to join the Cadet Corps the only real official documents here.

That shouldn’t have been possible. Of course, if she lived in the Underground beforehand, it would make perfect sense for her to have no trail until she surfaced, but it was right here in ink that she was born within Wall Rose.

Had she lied? Had she somehow managed to get topside without official immigration and slipped right through the fingers of the authorities? The Underground would have fit a little comfortably in his working picture of her–loner, exceptionally skilled in combat and other physical areas, not having a record before two years ago, the street fighting skills…

He wasn’t going to write off the Underground yet, but how she might have gotten topside needed some fleshing out before he could consider it more seriously.

Appearing out of the blue and an unknown past only made Levi’s unease grow. Maybe if there was more, he could have deduced what her reason for joining the military–hell, joining the _Scouts_ –was.

More questions, and not much in the way of answers.

Dissatisfied, Levi returned to his position resting against the wall with the file now tucked under an arm, watching as the speckled grey horse with the black to white mane gradually came closer to her as the rope slowly shortened, but it’s caution and unexplained fear still kept it out of her arm’s reach.

* * *

The new recruit in front of him was so nervous he was trembling. He might have thought he was hiding it well, but it was plain as day to Levi, who was leaning against the wall sipping on his cup of tea with eyes fixed forward on the recruit sitting on the other side of his desk. He’d called the young man in as a sort of character reference for L/N, asking him to state his opinion on the young woman’s abilities and if they were an asset to the Scouts.

His final question, however, had caused the recruit’s suddenly shifty demeanor, and Levi’s gaze narrowed slightly at him when he hesitated.

“Are there any qualities you feel she possesses that would be harmful to the Scouts?”

The recruit across from him couldn’t look Levi in the eyes, on the brink of saying something, but for some reason holding himself back. Levi waited for several moments before there was a spark of impatience starting to grow in him.

“Spit it out.”

The recruit’s shoulders hunched slightly, and he started to haltingly speak. “She doesn’t exactly get along with other people.”

Well, that could mean a lot of things. Levi wasn’t the friendliest person in the world, but that didn’t stop him from doing his damn job. Antisocial didn’t necessarily count as something that negated her ability to perform in the field. This kid needed to be more specific.

“Does she start fights with her comrades?” Levi asked bluntly.

“No, but she has been in a few–”

“Does she fail to communicate in the field?”

“Never, though–”

“Is she incapable of working as part of a group?”

“Not really–”

“Does she take actions that could cause harm to other members of the team in the field?”

“I haven’t–”

Levi let out a slow sigh. He kept interrupting the recruit because he didn’t need long winded answers that spun the narrative a certain way. He already knew he couldn’t entirely trust the feedback this kid was going to give him, because either he would downplay her abilities and up-play her flaws to make himself look better, or vice versa to make her look better, all based off the assumption Levi was asking because Levi was looking to have her join his squad.

It wasn’t _too_ far off the mark, but Levi was considering adding her less and less the farther he dug into her background. And while he knew he couldn’t trust much of what the kid was going to say to his face, that wasn’t the point. It was what came after this that mattered the most, and it still gave him something to work with to get a little further in his investigation.

She communicated and worked just fine in a group, and while she had been in fights before, she hadn’t been the one to start them. It was starting to look more like harassment of some degree on the other side that kept her from interacting much with her peers. Aside from the pretty much confirmed antisocial behavior outside of the field, of course.

“You have to be more specific than ‘she doesn’t play well with others.’ _I_ don’t always get along with other people–that doesn’t keep me from doing my job,” Levi deadpanned.

The recruit was really struggling to get it out now, his face all twisted up as he tried to rework his words. “While her skills are undeniable, socially, her relationship with her peers is…poor.”

Is that really what this amounted to? No one liked her because she wasn’t friendly enough with them? “Your complaint is that she’s not a social butterfly?”

“It’s more than that, sir, she’s not…”

Levi waited another five seconds before he decided this wasn’t being productive anymore. Time to kick him out of the office and go on to the next part, then. “Either come up with a solid answer, or I’ll take your silence as a no so you can leave to take care of that constipated look on your face.”

The recruit looked put out and frustrated, but he ended up standing from the chair and leaving, Levi watching him silently from over the rim of his cup and eyes lingering on the door after it had closed.

This sneaking around behind the scenes getting dirt on people was usually more Erwin’s speed, but Levi had been around Erwin long enough to pick up a few tricks of his own to use when necessary, like in moments like this. Levi could be subtle when he wanted to.

A few moments after the recruit walked out his door, Levi finished his tea, set down the empty cup on his desk, and followed after him, keeping far enough back that he wouldn’t be noticed. Just as he’d suspected, the recruit found his way back to another pair of recruits and proceeded to go about cathartically bitching about the situation.

Levi missed the part where the other two asked why Levi wanted to talk to him in his office, but since that wasn’t the important part, Levi wasn’t too concerned, stopping just around the corner and pressing his shoulder against the wall to listen in to what they _really_ had to say about L/N when it wasn’t being filtered by the intimidation of speaking with a superior.

“Of course miss ice princess is being considered for Captain Levi’s squad. Why wouldn’t she?” the recruit who had been in Levi’s office was fuming.

“I don’t get why you two are so upset–if Captain Levi’s already asking about her, surely that’s because she has the potential, right?” asked the young woman in their group.

“You didn’t train with her–you didn’t see how downright infuriating she was! If it wasn’t for the _occasional_ lost spar round or missed question on a test, or a margin behind someone else in an endurance test, whatever it was, she still somehow managed to look _perfect_. Even if you were ahead of her, it was like she was _right there behind you_!”

“Not to mention she didn’t even seem to try,” the third one muttered.

“Exactly! We’d work our asses off, and then she would waltz in and do whatever they asked her to as if it was as natural as breathing! It was so–so–so _infuriating_!”

“Sounds like you’re jealous,” the woman surmised.

“Wouldn’t you be upset? She didn’t even try! Then to make matters worse, she always acted like she was above us. Yeah she usually beat us all in everything, but she didn’t even _try_ to be nice about it.”

“Yeah–I know this girl who tried to be friends with her part way through training. But she was always treating her like a plague–she’d move further away from her, or she’d ignore her attempts to talk to her or actively dodge her. She made it pretty damn clear she wasn’t in the Corps to make friends. And she was like that with everyone–she never let anyone get closer than necessary to her. Sure, she’d give you some tips in the middle of training, but it was always just what was necessary, and she never let the conversation move to anything personal. She’s a bitch,” the friend added.

“I figured all that time spent by herself, she was just focused on her training. It got me certain that she was going to be top of the class–some say she should have. Hell, I thought she’d be pissed when she got sixth, but I swear she looked pleased. _Pleased_! And I thought she wanted to at least make the top five with how fucking perfect she seemed.”

“Okay, so she was antisocial in training and she’s good enough at what she did that it made you all jealous. I still don’t see anything that would make you hate her so much. I’ve seen her around a few times and she doesn’t seem nearly as frigid as you all say. Distant, yeah, but she seems…warm, if a bit melancholy,” the woman said thoughtfully.

“Don’t let it fool you. She’s probably just trying to make a better impression now that she’s where she wants to be and is about to get placed–possibly in the best squad, now, too, apparently.” There was the sound of a boot scuffing the stone, then a _thwack_ of a broom handle being thumped against the offender’s head. “Ow! And she’s not _warm_ and she’s not _innocent_. I don’t know what she was doing, but she was up to something during training, even if we couldn’t prove it.”

“Oh? And what was it? She managed to get an extra loaf of bread on her plate?” the woman asked almost mockingly. Clearly she wasn’t convinced by their ranting.

“One of the most infuriating things about her was how she could break the rules and still get away with it! She used to sneak out all the time at night while we were in the Cadets, but no one could ever catch her. Even when we gave the instructors a warning that she would be sneaking out again soon, she still wouldn’t get caught, and _we’d_ get in trouble for lying about a classmate. Not _once_ was she caught, and we had classmates that could attest to her not being in bed at some point in the night, so we _knew_ it was happening! But we could never prove it. It _still_ drives me nuts to this day!”

“If you kick this floor again, I’ll hit you even harder–you are _not_ messing up the cleaning job I’ve been working so hard on!” the woman fumed suddenly, and there was a bit of a scuffle before things calmed down again.

“I swear, if Captain Levi puts her on his squad I’m going to be so fucking–”

“Look at the bright side, you probably won’t have to deal with her anymore if that happens, because you’re nowhere near that league,” the friend teased. It sounded like there was going to be another scuffle breaking out, so Levi finally stepped around the corner to make himself known.

“Oi.”

The two boys immediately panicked, while the woman snapped to attention, eyes flickering to a fresh scuff mark on the stone with a clearly upset face to see the two were already back to mucking up her hard work. Levi ignored the two who were scrambling to their feet and trying to snap to a salute, walking past all three without even glancing at them.

“Get back to cleaning. And find another place to bitch about superiors,” he added before he continued down the hall and out of earshot once more.

Idiots.

There was nothing wrong with a little bitching to get it out of your system, but at least have the decency to do it somewhere less public where anyone could find and hear you.

However, Levi officially had some honest first hand accounts of her relationship to her peers, and a lead he could follow further into this mystery.

She snuck out a lot at night when she was in the cadets, huh? He wondered if she was still doing that now…

It seemed he had something to do now in the hours insomnia kept him from sleeping. He could keep an eye out to see if she was sneaking out, and try to figure out where she was going on these little escapades if they were, in fact, continuing after leaving the Cadets.

The more he looked into her, the more uneasy he became. He was already at the point where he knew he was going to have to bring up his concerns to Erwin, but he was going to make sure he’d gone as far as he could with this investigation of his before he went to Erwin.

* * *

For the first few nights after hearing about L/N’s nightly escapades in the cadets, Levi didn’t catch anything amiss. He was well aware of the best spots in this building to sneak out at this point, and had several points he liked to retreat to for some alone time that just happened to give him a good view of the surrounding area. He was fairly confident that if she tried to sneak out, he would be able to spot her as long as he was looking–which he was.

By the fifth night, he seriously considered the possibility that if she was doing something shady such as meeting a co-conspirator in the the night, the wise thing would be to cut all communication once she was inside the Scouts. If her nightly actions were something dastardly like that, then it was entirely possible that he wouldn’t see her sneak out because she wouldn’t make the attempts now in such a high risk area.

Still, Levi kept an eye out, always near a window at night so he could peer out into the darkness and see anyone trying to slip away if it did happen.

At long last, almost three weeks after the recruits had first arrived, he managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a hooded figure moving in the darkness away from the building. Believing it to be L/N, he got up from his seat immediately, taking the less forgiving but more direct route of climbing out the window and down to the ground so he could close the distance before she left his sight entirely and he lost track of her. Going through the building down to the ground floor and to a proper exit would have taken him too long, so his unconventional route was one he didn’t second guess.

Landing quietly on the paved stones, Levi crept forward at a walk that was barely restrained from becoming a jog for the first few moments, keeping to the shadows like his quarry as he attempted to follow after her. He wasn’t armed in case there was trouble, mostly because he didn’t get the luxury of enough time to grab a weapon–he’d only caught a fleeting glimpse, so he’d had to act instantly.

Levi managed to catch up to where he would want to be on a tail after two streets, feeling himself settle down internally once he was the desired distance away. She didn’t slow down, plowing forwards with a purpose that told him she knew exactly where she was going and she was going to waste no time getting there–he just had to keep up.

Yes, she. He didn’t have confirmation that it was her, but he was operating off the assumption it was between the story he’d heard and the fact he’d been waiting for something like this to happen and her to be the culprit.

He continued to follow her street after street, taking several corners, occasionally losing sight of her before he caught movement again and continued on the path. After a few minutes, however, he realized these direction changes weren’t exactly pointed and purposeful, but random. They happened too suddenly and without warning for them to be planned.

She knew he was following her, and she was trying to shake him.

Hoping to make her think that she lost him, Levi slowed down his pace, allowing her to pull a little further ahead, far enough away it would be more difficult for him to follow, but at the same time it would give her the impression that he was too far away and that she lost him.

Levi managed to make it a few more streets this way, catching the edge of a cape or a flash of movement as she turned a corner to give him a direction, until suddenly, he realized he couldn’t hear footsteps or any other sound in the night, and he no longer had even a fleeting visual on her in order to give him a sense of direction.

That wasn’t possible. Pulling back had been risky, yes, but he’d been sure he could still keep track of her. And he should have at least been able to hear footsteps in the distance, because she would have had to speed up to lose him so suddenly.

Did she have ODM gear hidden under her cape? Had she taken for the skies to get out of visible range of the streets?

Wanting to test the theory before she could get too far, Levi used window sills, boxes by stalls, wooden awnings, whatever he could to climb up to the roof of one of the buildings, turning around swiftly with his head on a swivel as he tried to catch a glimpse of movement, a figure moving through the night either on ODM gear or on the streets down below.

Nothing. It was just him standing alone on this roof in the night’s silence.

Where the hell had she gone?

* * *

“Levi…why didn’t you bring this to my attention sooner?”

Levi scowled, meeting Erwin’s serious expression head on before he turned to move again, occasionally crossing the floor at an extremely slow pace, stopping for a while before he would turn around and move again. Considering Levi usually remained stationary, it counted as a sign of unease.

He had just come to Erwin with what he knew about L/N, which admittedly wasn’t much. For the most part, he was simply telling Erwin about his concerns and a bad feeling that he’d been harboring since meeting her. He did have some legitimate red flags, like her apparent trips out into the night that were continuing here at the Scouts and her lack of a record from before two years ago with nothing to show she might have been from the Underground.

“Because it was just basic curiosity at first, but the more I heard, the more I had to be concerned about,” Levi said pointedly, lips pulled down in a prominent frown as he mulled over everything in his mind.

“Well, based off what you’ve been able to find out, if she _is_ a threat, how _much_ of a threat would she be,” Erwin asked patiently, his eyes continuing to track Levi as he moved about the room. Levi stopped, turning his head slightly in Erwin’s direction.

“Erwin…she had me. In that spar on the training grounds. But at the last second, she shifted and threw the match,” Levi explained quietly.

“…I see.”

Levi turned around all the way to see Erwin sitting forward in his chair, hands laced together in front of him and pressed against his lips, eyebrows furrowed together in contemplation.

“Don’t mark her as an enemy in your mind, yet, Levi. Let this play out a while longer, first. This may be a situation where we need to spring the trap after it’s set to truly know the situation. So far, she hasn’t done anything to hurt humanity’s mission regarding the Titans. I don’t like how many unknowns there are with her, either, which is precisely why we have to approach this correctly. There’s as much a chance we could be wrong as there is that we can be right about her intentions.” Erwin’s hands carefully folded back over one another on top of the table, Erwin turning his gaze on Levi with that expression of his that usually appeared when he was mentally calculating a gamble. “Continue your investigation as you see fit, so long as you don’t outright antagonize her. We don’t want to risk driving her off, if these skills your glimpsing are as strong as your intuition tells you they are. She could still be a great asset if she’s truly on our side. Keep an eye on her, try to figure out at least if her intentions align with our own or run against them.”

“And you?” Levi asked suspiciously, looking to see if that gambling air about Erwin was tipping over into the dangerous side of things.

Erwin hummed. “I’ll do some digging of my own, see what I can find. Of course, if you can’t find anything concrete by the next expedition, going beyond the walls will allow you to get not only a stronger grasp on the skills she’s bringing to the table, but will help with figuring out her general intentions.”

“I don’t like the thought of having to babysit while we’re out there,” Levi returned flatly. Expeditions were far too unpredictable as they were without adding a mysterious woman of unknown capabilities and intentions along for the ride with the task to keep a sharp eye on her and evaluate her every move.

“Then perhaps you’ll want to find out if you can trust her out there or not, first. I know you can’t guarantee finding the answers to _all_ of your questions in such a short amount of time, but you could at least find out if she will have the back of her fellow scouts on the first expedition,” Erwin said with a pointed look. Levi could already tell this mess might get a little ugly, but at the very least, knowing he could trust her not to turn and kill someone on the expedition would go a _long_ way in making his job digging into her background a lot easier.

After Levi gave a nod of confirmation, Erwin continued. “In the meantime, I’ll make sure she’s placed in the formation so that she’s within your sight at all times. Considering the rumors you’ve stirred up that you might be looking to recruit her to your squad, it would only make sense for you to be watching her out in the field to see how she does. It’s also a nice excuse for you to make a few more direct inquiries to L/N, herself. You’ve done plenty of work in the background, I think it’s safe to say you can start approaching her as well. Subtly, of course.”

“After she shook me last night, she might already be on edge,” Levi pointed out. She had to have known someone followed her. There were no guarantees that she knew it was Levi, and he didn’t think she’d had the chance to confirm who was following her any more than he’d had a chance to confirm if he was following her.

“Then be careful about it. But whenever you come to a decision about whether she’s a danger or not, I want to know. This will go a lot smoother and faster if we’re sharing information.”

“I’m not stupid, Erwin,” Levi said with a long-suffering sigh, straightening up. “Anything else?”

Erwin’s lips twitched upwards towards a smile, his hands moving to a drawer to pull out some paper and ink. “Have fun making a new friend.”

Levi scowled again, turning to leave after it was clear Erwin was ready to move on to the next thing. He was a little worried about this task to test L/N’s intentions to help the scouts before going out into the field, especially because he knew that look of Erwin’s meant he would set it up and Levi would simply have to observe.

But, he did have his own ways of testing her out as a person, and some people he could get to help without having to inform them of everything behind it. He was already observing her from a distance and could safely continue to do so. With the rumors going around he was looking to take her in under his wing, he could use that to his advantage to ask a few questions and approach her at the right times.

Yet, despite the fact he knew he would have help in prodding at her to see a bit more of what she was made of, he couldn’t help but notice that his sense of unease that had been tickling in the back of his mind was not shrinking. If anything, it only seemed more prevalent. As long as he continued to have this feeling of unease about her, he wasn’t going to let the matter rest. He was _going_ to figure out what she was hiding, if only so he could assuage or confirm his suspicions before they grew wildly out of control.

At least it seemed Erwin shared his concern, confirming it wasn’t all in his head, and there was cause to worry. He only hoped they could figure out what was going on here before they had to spring the trap, as Erwin had suggested.

Levi shook his head. He could worry about that, later. First, he had a recruit to get a feel of before they went outside the walls, and he had to make sure he didn’t spook her while learning what made her tick.

Thankfully, he already had a pretty good idea where to find her in her down time, with all the work she’d been putting in to fix the one glaring flaw in her ability to go outside the walls.

The stables.


	3. Quicksand

***Levi’s POV***

You could tell a lot about a person from how they treated animals.

For the Scouts, it was the horses especially that mattered, as they were one of the few lifelines out beyond the walls. With how the horses had avoided L/N with everything they had, people in the vicinity would mutter about how she would never go beyond the walls at this rate, or how she had to be a bad person and the horses were sensing it.

That was one theory to go with.

However, as Levi continued to watch her, he never once saw her get angry or frustrated with them. Sometimes there was sadness, or it looked like she was on the edge of admitting defeat, but she continued to approach them with patient understanding, as if she knew exactly what they were afraid of, and was asking them not to be because she couldn’t change it.

Gradually, the dappled grey allowed her to come closer and closer. They started having problems giving someone else the job of cleaning the stables because she was spending so much of her free time in there, and she would clean while there to allow her to spend more time around the horses and give her something else to do besides just sitting there waiting for skittish horses to calm down. She was smart enough to know that she needed more than just one to calm down around her, though she was still putting in the work to form a bond with at least one. In case she was ever in a position where she needed another horse, though, it seemed she wanted the other horses to at least be comfortable with her presence–hence all the time spent in the stables.

If she wasn’t out in the field walking with the mare, then she was inside by the horse’s stall, leaning against the wall or sitting against the door. Then, at long last, she could be seen walking around side by side with her horse, the lead short and fairly loose. And after a few days holding a treat into the stall and waiting for the horse to feel comfortable coming up to her to eat it out of her hand, she finally made it /into/ the stall. Her hard work was paying off, as now she could be found inside the stall, gently brushing the dappled grey mare while she spoke in soft tones to the horse, continuing to build up the trust and bond between the two of them.

As Levi stepped into the stables, he could hear her speaking softly with the mare, her words underlined with each thoughtful brush stroke.

“There we go…that’s a good girl…see, just like I said, nothing to be afraid of. I know I’m scary, you all remind me every time I come in here, but I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anyone–I’m just here to help. See, that feels much better, doesn’t it? I’m not going to hurt you. I promise as long as I’m around, nothing’s going to hurt you. There we go…Steady…Shh…”

Levi’s head turned slightly at the subject of her rambling, his gaze following down the line until he spotted the stall his horse was in, not far from L/N’s horse.

“You don’t mind all my rambling, do you, Zephyr? It’s nice to talk to someone, even if they’re not going to talk back. I haven’t had anyone to talk to in…” She grew quiet, and even the brushing stopped for a moment. Curious. “…too long,” she finished, her voice hardly above a whisper.

She seemed to quiet down entirely as Levi risked stepping into the stables, and he realized he had been heard, or at the very least she’d become aware she wasn’t by herself. Continuing forward casually, Levi turned his head to look into the stable as he passed, spotting L/N with the brush set off to the side and currently working on undoing any tangles in Zephyr’s mane. Their eyes met for a moment, and Levi paused.

“Will she let you ride her, yet?”

She turned away, the faintest touch of red entering her cheeks at the mention of her trouble with the horses. “Not yet. But I don’t think it will be much longer before she does.”

Levi’s gaze swept over the stable, kept immensely clean with fresh straw, water, and food, and the coat on the horse smooth and lustrous. At this rate, the mare was going to be more of a show horse than a war horse.

“You’re not slacking anywhere else, are you?” Levi asked as his gaze slipped over the pristine stall and back to her. A stall didn’t get that clean without a lot of constant work.

“No, sir. This is where I was lacking the most, so it’s getting more of my attention. But I’m making sure other parts of my training aren’t suffering.”

Well, he’d be the judge of that. With the way she held up in training, any degree of slipping would be easy to spot.

Levi resumed what he was doing, walking deeper into the stables to check on his horse, which he planned to take for a brief ride to stretch his legs. “Don’t make a promise you can’t keep,” he added before L/N left his field of vision. The stable was quiet for a few moments, broken only by the sound of Levi getting his horse ready to go.

So quietly he almost didn’t hear it, Levi got a reply.

“This one I can keep.”

* * *

Earlier in the day, Levi had jumped on the chance to get a more personal glimpse at L/N, taking over the cleanliness checks in the barracks, much to everyone else’s dismay. He was well aware that his standards were far above everyone else’s, but today they were just going to have to deal with it, and step it up. On the bright side, as he walked down the lines of beds, he was able to see who was terrible at doing a decent cleaning job and who had potential.

He gave criticisms at every bed–dust, missed spots, trying to hide part of the mess under the beds, half-assed jobs, on and on the list went. When he got to L/N…

Now this was starting to get creepy.

His practiced eye swept over her space as she stood at attention just off to the side, taking in the bed spread smoothed of wrinkles, the dusted and wiped down surfaces, everything tucked away, floor swept and clean in her area–even a little into the surrounding spaces. There wasn’t anything in the way of personal effects, though–not out in the open, anyway.

It was immaculate. Up to his standards practically to a T. It was an unexpected discovery, amongst the many things he thought he’d see. He thought he might see a personal effect here or there that would give him a bit more on her personality, but there was nothing he could see during a cleanliness inspection.

He’d have to come back later.

_Shit, I’m starting to sound like a goddamn stalker._

Carefully, Levi ran a hand on the underside of the bed, the nightstand, anywhere there might be dirt left over, and came away with nothing.

She was the only one he walked by without saying anything, because he had no critiques to give. He wondered if she was always this clean, or she’d heard he was doing the inspections and pulled off a miracle.

* * *

He went back when there was no one around to do a more thorough search, still believing that she might have something that would tip him off a little more. Frankly, if he continued to find a complete lack of personal effects, that would bolster his suspicions as well, because it signified something to be hidden or something that was trying to be forgotten, or a preparation to run at a moment’s notice.

He didn’t know what he would find, if anything, but if it was another lead, he would take it.

The barracks were currently empty, and he had made sure they’d be empty for a while, choosing the time there was a morning drill going on for the new recruits to sneak in and do some digging.

First he checked the footlocker at the end of her bed, opening it up and carefully shifting through. Mostly it was made up of uniform clothes, a pair of nice plainclothes, a pair of casual plainclothes, a couple more comfortable workout clothes, a plain black cloak–

His hand paused on the cloak. It looked like it could be the one being worn by the person he’d pursued and lost that one night. Not a confirmation, but it was further evidence she was sneaking out at night, even if he hadn’t seen her face.

Finding nothing else suspicious in the footlocker, Levi checked under the bed and found only dress shoes and casual shoes, and then moved onto the nightstand.

Here, he found a book from the library on herbology with a bookmark on custom tea blends, as well as a tin of some of the said tins. There was quite a bit of chamomile and mint from the whiff he was immediately hit with upon checking inside the tin, with a couple other blends–but mostly the chamomile and mint. Inside, he also found a tightly bound bundle of white sage in a cloth covering, blank sheets of paper, more writing utensils than he would have expected, and a leather bound folio. Opening it revealed no official documents missing from her background, no personal letters or intercepted reports.

Inside, it was gorgeous artwork. Sketches of the horses in various poses of rest or activity, of the scenery around Wall Rose, a sketch of one of the few mansions in the district, and–

Levi paused, eyes widening as he stilled, the silence in the room pressing in on him. His mind flashed back to just the other day, when he’d seen Zephyr out in the field away from the other horses, laying down and looking contently about, but not moving. He’d only been able to make out part of L/N through the long grass, leaning against the horse with her knees pulled up, looking lost in something. He’d assumed it was a book from the distance where he was once more leaning against the wall in the shadows of the stables, or that she was writing something.

Amongst the more recent drawings of the horses, there was a portrait of him, leaning against that wall at the stables, arms crossed, head slightly bowed but eyes centered on the observer, or, in this case, the artist. Even the shade was accounted for, making the features a little more difficult to make out, but they were still clear and detailed.

She’d seen him well enough at that distance to make out and sketch his features in this detail? Or had some of it been visualization?

More importantly, it was pretty much confirmation that she knew he was watching her.

Levi closed the folio, putting everything back in its proper place with care, feeling intrusive and out of place now that he’d failed to come up with anything malicious in nature. There were only a couple things that made him uneasy with the implications, never anything that proved to be outright dangerous, as always. And he couldn’t exactly say anything about the sketch of himself without her knowing he’d gone through her belongings.

Levi was gone long before the recruits returned to the barracks from their drill.

* * *

She’d slipped away from the main group after the next combat training session, hanging back and going a different direction than the rest of the group. Levi had a brief moment where he thought she might be slipping away to the same place she went at night, and had followed her on the off chance that was the case.

She ended up going to a quiet corner of the Scout headquarters, at a corner of buildings near the forest that no one bothered with. Once there, she kneeled down, tending to a cluster of plants that was lined up in the familiar form of a small garden. It was fairly new, too, from what Levi could see, which told him she probably planted them herself not too long ago. How long had she been working on this little side project?

Just another one of his suspicions turning out to be harmless activity. He was just about ready to write off his uneasy feeling as paranoia.

He could have just walked off and left her alone, but he lingered, waiting until she finished what she was doing and left before he quietly approached the garden to satiate his own curiosity.

Kneeling down, he realized that the tiny garden was made up of plants, mainly herbs, that could be used in tea making. There were brushes of mint, chamomile, and lemongrass as the most notable plants, and near the corner where they would get full sun and could help hide the little herb garden there were even three freshly planted bushes, hibiscus, raspberry, and rose, with the flowering bushes meant to support the raspberry in the middle. The soil was dark and the leaves had beads of water still on them that shined on his thumb after a careful stroke against a leaf to see it healthy and strong, showing that L/N had been by to water them. They were doing fairly well, from what he could see, even though the plants were too young to harvest anything from.

Was she attempting to grow the materials to make her own tea blends so she wouldn’t have to spend much of her salary on tea?

Standing to leave as that pesky feeling of intrusion started to worm its way back into his mind, Levi caught sight of a small collection of white sage, directly out in the sun and recently planted, but noticeably far away from the other plants. It was curious, the way it was planted so that it couldn’t be missed and could be easily avoided. At the same time, though, it could just have been an aggressively growing plant that would take over the other plants if it got too close to them. While he knew it could also be used in teas, it wasn’t as common…and he’d seen a bundle of the sage spikes tightly bound and covered in her nightstand.

What was so special about it? Why did she have it?

Levi shook his head, turning to leave and mentally filing the questions about the white sage under “personal questions” instead of “suspicions.”

His suspicions weren’t entirely gone. While he was getting a stronger sense of her character that caused his doubts about her to waver, he still had some glaring questions he couldn’t ignore that caused his wariness to endure…for now.

* * *

ODM gear training–another essential part to life in the Scouts. At this point in time, it was a chance for officers to get a feel for the skills of the cadets first hand instead of just what it said on paper about their Cadet Corps training.

The trees here were thick, allowing perfect cover for their Titan dummies spread sporadically throughout the woods. At the highest points in the trees, the officers stood on platforms to observe quietly, moving from platform to platform as needed while the recruits moved through the trees, watching the cadets zip around the forest looking for Titans.

Levi’s eyes, however, were drawn to the fact that Erwin was out here. He knew for a fact that Erwin had better things to be doing than watching rookies try to hunt down dummies, but for some reason he was always near the same spot Levi was, his gaze fixed complacently in the same area, flickering in disinterest past most of the cadets. If any of the rookies knew he was here, the word would spread like wildfire, and they might shift their attention to trying their damndest to impress the Commander instead of doing the drill properly.

But there was a gleam in Erwin’s eyes. He was here for a reason. Levi just didn’t know what it was, which unsettled him, but didn’t distract him from watching the recruits.

Erwin’s gaze caught Levi’s, and the faintest, unsettling smile appeared on his lips, gone in the next second as his attention was drawn towards an oncoming recruit who was _high_ in the trees, apparently trying the high-ground tactic to spot a Titan before the others. A terrible approach, really, since it allowed more tree cover for the Titans by adding more branches and foliage below the individual.

Levi started to turn away in disinterest, hearing the sound of another fast-approaching recruit coming towards them. While the recruit was still in his peripherals, they disengaged the cables, ready to fire them into another tree to make a sharp turn.

Except the cables didn’t deploy.

The recruit let out a shriek and plummeted towards the ground from a _dangerous_ height, gear malfunctioning and not sending out the cables to catch them on their way down. Levi whipped around, hands flying out to his holstered ODM controls–

–Erwin didn’t look surprised by what was happening–

Someone darted in low and fast. It was one of the recruits, the one that had already been moving in their direction, and as such, was in the best position to react first.

Of all the people it could have been, it was L/N.

She wasn’t using any gas, her falling momentum casing her to come in low and fast to the ground, cables deploying at the last moment to even out her fall and propel her forward, her back running parallel with the ground as she shot towards the falling cadet. When she was close enough, she angled herself back up to intercept the recruit, gas propelling her up into the air instead of her momentum. There was an audible thud and grunt as they collided, L/N’s arm wrapped around the fallen recruit’s midriff as she twisted to fire another cable to bring herself up to safety.

The only problem was that there were two dummies in the direction she was flying, and the training didn’t stop because of a hiccup.

One of the dummies swung down and towards her, on a clear collision course if she didn’t see it and couldn’t react fast enough. At least now it would hurt like a bitch but it wouldn’t be fatal.

L/N let loose a sudden burst of gas to speed up and rolled so she was facing the ground, back upwards and exposed to the falling dummy. For a second, he thought she was going to take the brunt of the blow–which would mean death if this had been real. She pulled herself upright at the last second, sailing right underneath where the dummy titan’s mouth would be, her body twisted out of reach of the dummy, and she kicked off the side of its neck to give herself another boost, cables firing upwards high into the trees and causing her to sore upwards, another brief burst of gas allowing her the momentum to keep her going upwards with the added weight still tucked against her side with one arm.

The second dummy swung out from behind the trees, fast enough to knock someone clean out of the air. Instead of going under like she did the first time, she twisted again, keeping the recruit in her arms safe from impact. She arched over him in an upside U, cables firing up and out to bring them safely onto a tree branch. She set the other recruit down, a hand on their shoulder as she said something to them, checking their gear with them before waving for one of the other officers to come over and get the recruit. Once the recruit who fell was guaranteed to be alright, she kicked off, doubling back to slice through the Titan dummy napes before disappearing back into the forest.

Levi looked back over at Erwin, able to immediately recognize that gleam in his eyes as Erwin looked out in the direction L/N had taken off towards. It was the same look Levi saw in the Underground, back when they met. Ulterior intentions or not, Erwin was going to do his damndest to make sure she was on their side in the end, and speaking from experience, Levi knew it was possible.

Releasing his grip on his ODM controls, Levi’s gaze flickered back over to the recruit that had fallen, that _look_ he’d seen on Erwin’s face moments before it happened flashing through his mind.

 _I know you can’t guarantee finding the answers to_ all _of your questions in such a short amount of time, but you could at least find out if she will have the back of her fellow scouts on the first expedition._

That had been planned, hadn’t it? He wanted to test if she had her comrades backs in a moment of danger, and she had responded immediately and without hesitation. Levi had to trust that there had been _some_ kind of backup plan to make sure that recruit didn’t end up dead–Erwin wouldn’t have done something like that without having someone waiting in the wings in case L/N acted selfishly.

He was sure everyone was impressed after what she’d just pulled off even with someone under her arm, but part of him…wasn’t really surprised. Then again, Levi was the only one who’d had a first hand taste of how strong she really was. This was a reassurance that her other training had not slipped while she put so much effort into the horses, and was further confirmation at the asset she could be to them as a member of the Scouts.

Let’s hope she could keep that even head when it was Titan jaws snapping at her and not just wooden figures swinging her way.

* * *

He felt absolutely drained.

It was the night before the next expedition, and Levi found himself sitting alone in the mess hall, a cup of steaming tea resting on the table in front of him with his fingertips lingering lightly on the rim of the cup. Ever since that first night he’d caught L/N sneaking out, he’d been staying up as much as possible to try and catch her sneaking out again. He was already used to not sleeping much, but even he had his limits. His eyelids were heavy, and his focus kept slipping, even as he tried to get down a cup of tea to help him sleep more soundly tonight so he would be at his best tomorrow.

He would finally get to see L/N in the field. Erwin was still planning on keeping her in the formation where Levi would have her in his sights at all time so he could see how she did when it wasn’t training anymore. Not to mention, he was looking forward to it.

His suspicions had started to die down in the back of his mind, giving way to glowing embers of a curiosity he figured would be satiated with time. Perhaps that uneasiness in his gut had nothing to do with her trustworthiness, and he had simply been caught off guard by her abilities. Perhaps the thought of a rookie already able to go toe to toe with him had unnerved him, and that was where the feeling originated.

The more he pried into her as a person, the less of a reason he found to be doubtful of her intentions. The recruits who’d been in class with her had described her as cold and unsociable, someone up to trouble that was never discovered and far more skilled than she let on. However, when he observed _her_ and came within proximity to her, she was warm, and careful, and considerate, although he still did not miss the hesitation, the way she was ready to pull away at a moment’s notice and increase the distance once more, the way she seemed to always be holding something back…

But that didn’t mean she was a bad person. If anything, he was worried about her because she seemed far more empathetic under the surface than she let on. He’d seen the garden she tended to quietly, seen her artistic hobby, seen how she interacted with her horse Zephyr now that she was able to ride the mare. Even if she didn’t have any close friends in the Scouts, she was close with that horse, spending most of her free time with Zephyr, brushing her, laying with her in the field while she drew or read, simply walking with her.

She seemed…gentle, at heart. Before he knew it, he was softening towards her. How could he see all of that, and _not_ start to let go of his suspicions? It’s why watching her had suddenly felt intrusive, why this final night he had stopped staring out the window watching for a hooded figure and come into the mess hall to seek tea to help him sleep instead of forcing himself to stay up all night _again_ to keep an eye out for her slipping out into the night.

The silence was comforting, his limbs feeling heavy, head tilting downwards, fingers going limp around the empty cup as he slowly…nodded off…

He was so exhausted…

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

Your steps down the darkened halls of the Scout Headquarters were silent, your hood still drawn as you made your way deeper into the stone building. While your face was still hidden in shadow, your hand did a careful rub around your mouth to be sure that you didn’t have any trace of your meal lingering on your face.

You hadn’t _needed_ to sneak out for another bite, but considering you were going on an expedition tomorrow, you’d decided to play it safe and sneak out again to make sure you were fully satiated. You needed to be at peak performance, and you needed to make sure your bloodlust was fully satiated in case you found yourself in the middle of a bloodbath.

The last thing you needed was to lose control in front of everyone and feed off of a fellow Scout. All the pleading and rationalizing in the world wasn’t going to save you from a vengeful blade or banishment in that kind of situation.

Once you were sure there wasn’t any blood on your face, you lowered your hood, quietly making your way into the barracks and retrieving one of your bought chamomile tea bags before slipping away to the mess hall. The only sounds in the castle was the faint talking of guards at the entrance, the huffs or snickers of the horses in the stables, and the soft breaths and heartbeats of the sleeping scouts that filled Headquarters.

The closer you got to the mess hall, however, the more you could make out a singular heartbeat and soft breathing, the familiar sound of someone fast asleep.

In the mess hall?

Once you were close enough, you managed to catch the faintest scent that immediately told you who was asleep in the mess hall. That scent had been following you since your sparring match. It had wafted on the wind from the distance as he watched you from beside the stables or across training grounds, had lingered on your personal effects after you came back from a morning drill, had briefly lingered amongst the perfume of herbs and flowery plants in your little garden, and had cut through your senses the last time you’d snuck out for a bite, informing you that you were being followed long before you heard his breaths and heartbeat.

You’d _known_ Captain Levi was watching you closely, and as such, you’d learned to attune yourself to his scent so you would know when he was nearby. He was always _clean_ , with traces of tea and mint lingering despite the strong scent of soap, either from cleaning his surroundings or himself. But there was also the scent of his blood, sometimes unique for people with potent bloodlines, whose blood would be exceptional if you dared to partake.

Of course, Captain Levi, Commander Erwin, any of the Scouts were a hard _off limits_ , so that was never something you were going to give into, never a taste that you would know. But that didn’t mean you would fail to pick up on the rich aroma his blood gave off.

God forbid his blood was ever spilled in front of you. _That_ would be a challenge to resist.

Able to tell that he was asleep, you entered the mess hall quietly but without reservations, determined to make your cup of tea even if there was someone else in the room.

He seemed to have fallen asleep at the table, head slumped over into his chest, one arm still lying limply next to a cup of tea that, due to the scent that still had traces in the air, had been meant to help him sleep. His hair fell carefree into his face, lips parted slightly for his quiet breaths to slip between.

Good. He’d been looking exhausted recently, and you knew it was because he was keeping such a close eye on you. It was almost like you couldn’t go anywhere without Levi one step behind you. The rumors said it was because he was thinking of having you join his squad, but you doubted that was really the reason. Your suspicion was that he’d grown suspicious of you after your spar, and he was trying to figure out what you were hiding. If he’d simply been looking to have you on his squad, he wouldn’t have gone poking around your personal effects or been following you whenever you were by yourself.

You didn’t hate him for it–he was just doing his job, and he had every right to be suspicious. Hell, if his instincts had told him there was something wrong with you, that there was something dangerous about you, they weren’t _wrong_. He was right to follow them and poke around. It was just for your own sake that you hoped you could dodge him until his suspicions disappeared and he could accept you weren’t here out of malice.

You really were here to help. Your intentions were genuine, even if you had some personal monsters you were trying to keep in the dark. You just weren’t so sure you could convince _them_ that you weren’t a threat if they were to ever find out what you were. You didn’t even want to think of what Captain Levi’s reaction would be if he ever found out, especially if he found out while armed and in the same room as you.

There were already those who knew about your species, and considered you to be a far more lethal threat to humanity than Titans, one that needed to be expunged indiscriminately. The fear was always there that if someone discovered you, they would see things that way, that they wouldn’t hesitate to put down a clear threat to humanity.

Shaking the dark thoughts from your mind, you focused on the here and now instead of what ifs that might never come to pass. Instead, you carefully removed your cloak from around your shoulders and approached Levi quietly and carefully, draping the dark cloth around his body to keep him covered up.

You’d just been outside, so of course you were aware that it wasn’t the warmest night.

You paused just short of lifting your hands, hearing a shift in his heartbeat and breathing that suggested he might wake up. It figured he would be a light sleeper. Maybe you should have just left him alone instead of risking waking him up.

Well, either way, it would be more awkward if he woke to you just _standing_ there next to him–if he did wake up. There was still the chance he would slip back into sleep.

Attempting to stay silent so you wouldn’t disturb him anymore than you already had, you slipped away into the kitchen, going about making your cup of tea as quietly as you could, movements exaggerated with how slow you were going in an attempt not to let the kettle and other dishes rattle. While you made your tea, you could hear the slightest shift of fabric, hear a pause, his heart rate and breathing back to normal waking pace.

Well, shit. It looked like you’d managed to wake him up with your act of kindness now gone wrong. You should have left him alone instead of disturbing his sleep. And now you were going to have to be social when you left the kitchen.

Well…maybe that was a good thing. With all this watching from a distance, maybe it would help to put his mind at ease if he was to simply talk to you, just a little.

Though you could also very likely end up headed towards a conversation you weren’t ready to have, one you couldn’t answer even though they were so simple, like ‘where did you come from’ and anything related to family.

You let out a soft sigh as you poured your tea into your cup, resigning yourself to the incoming late night conversation with Captain Levi.

As you walked back into the eating area of the mess hall where Levi had fallen asleep, you could see him sitting up properly again, your cape folded up neatly and sitting on the tabletop with his hand resting thoughtfully in its center, a small frown on his lips.

He looked up when you entered the room, and something flashed in his eyes, gone as soon as it appeared. It made you uneasy.

Was there blood on your cape? No, you were certain there wasn’t any blood–you knew what you were doing, and you knew how to eat without spilling any blood or making a mess. There wasn’t any blood on your cape. So what was that look for? Was it just from his suspicions? Had he figured you had just come back from sneaking out again?

“What are you doing up?” Levi asked bluntly as you approached, teacup in hand

As much as you wanted to turn the question around on him, the one who had fallen asleep in the mess hall, you knew better. You were trying to stay on his good side, not antagonize him, which was already difficult when the odds were already so stacked against you.

You took a seat, raising the cup slightly as both your hands curled around the hot cup to cradle it in your grasp. “I was feeling restless, so I came down here to get something to calm my nerves,” you told him honestly, taking a slow sip of tea once you’d finished speaking.

“And you felt the need for a cloak on the way from the barracks to the kitchen?” Levi asked skeptically, eyebrow cocked challengingly.

You shrugged, outwardly unfazed by his question. “I tried walking it off first. Didn’t work out like I’d hoped.”

“Are you nervous?”

Your eyes flickered his way, meeting his steady gaze and briefly wondering if he was actually referring to tomorrow, or if that was meant to double as referring to him always watching her, asking if she had a reason to be nervous about it.

“I suppose I should be. Afraid, even. But whenever I start to get worried I tell myself whatever happens, happens. I’ll do what I can, when I can. If I come back, wonderful, if I don’t…I won’t be going out quietly,” you said, grip tightening slightly around the cup as you stared down at the water colored by the chamomile blend. “Maybe subconsciously I am nervous, and that’s why I’m restless tonight.”

Levi was fixing you with a hard look at your rather passive answer, eyes probing, reading every muscle twitch looking for a lie or a deeper meaning. “Aren’t you itching to kill Titans? Or at least shitting yourself at the chance to go outside the walls?”

“Except I didn’t come to kill Titans, specifically. Going outside the walls, seeing what’s out there, that’s a bonus. I came to help. Whether that means killing Titans, guarding carts, playing messenger or lookout, or mucking out stalls. As long as I feel like I’m doing something to help.”

Levi leaned back in his seat. He didn’t look particularly impressed with your attitude. “Why did you join the Scouts?” he asked bluntly. “Why not the MPs or the Garrison?”

Images flashed through your mind. Drunken garrison members stationed in Wall Rose who only sat around gambling, drinking, and ignoring their duties. Your eyes lifted to the raven-haired man in front of you, and you had the faintest memory pass through your mind of a black haired youth pressed into the ground by Military Police, about to beat the kid to a pulp to teach the Underground gutter rat not to steal, even though it was the only way the kid was going to get something to eat. Corruption, complacency, and current uselessness in the fight against the Titans, that’s all you thought when you heard Military Police or Garrison Regiment. You knew it was a harsh viewpoint, and a blanket one that didn’t truly apply to everyone in either branch, but that impression had been made so strongly on you that you couldn’t resolve it, not at this point.

Also, this was a good chance to plant the seed that she really did want to help, that she really was an ally and not an enemy. Just in case she was found out.

“I wanted to go somewhere I could actually _do something_ , where I could put my skills to good use and do something worthwhile. I know that’s not the general public feeling about what the Scouts do, but I knew if I went to the Garrison or the MPs, I’d be wasted there. Complacency isn’t for me. I knew the Scouts was the best place for me to go if I wanted to do something that could actually help.”

You quieted again, taking another sip from the cup. Once more, it was true. If you wanted to use your vampiric abilities to make a difference, the Scouts was the best place for you. You were tired of existing in shadows, of letting days slip by without making any kind of impact on the world around you. No more complacency. You wanted to take action and do something with your abilities other than hunt and eat people. What better way than to go out and fight the Titans? They were still a threat to you, you couldn’t regenerate like a Titan, and decapitation from teeth would kill you just as surely as a stake through the heart. But you had a better chance against the Titans than the average human, and you wanted to use your better chances to give humanity a better opportunity to fight back. _That_ would make your existence feel…worthwhile. Instead of parasitic.

Down at the other end of the table, Levi sighed, pushing himself up onto his feet, likely to head back to his room before he fell asleep in the mess hall again.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Levi wasn’t too enthused by most of her reasoning for joining the Scouts. He had seen far too many pointless deaths to optimistically say that she wouldn’t die pointlessly in the Scouts. Hell, she had a higher chance of dying needlessly in the Scouts than anywhere else, especially if she had the wrong attitude going out there. A hero complex could get her killed just as easily as complacency. She should be focused on survival, and how casually she spoke about what could happen tomorrow made him uncomfortable. He’d be more at ease if she was displaying a determination to come back, some kind of fire, a spark. Instead, it felt like she thought there was something she needed to prove, and he worried it was the wrong priority.

Hopefully, her attitude would change once she saw the hell of the Titans up close. If not, he wasn’t going to have much hope for her going forward.

Getting to his feet, Levi grabbed his teacup to clean up in his chambers, leaving the cloak folded on the table for her to retrieve when she was finished down here.

“Make sure you come back to tend to those plants. They’ll die if there’s not someone around to take care of them,” he said in a monotone voice before turning to leave. He made it almost to the door before she spoke up again.

“Captain Levi?”

He paused, but he didn’t turn or say anything, waiting to hear what she wanted to say.

“Just because I’m not open with everyone, doesn’t mean I’m a threat. There’s just some parts of myself I would like to keep to myself,” she said softly. His head twitched to the side at the unexpected comment, catching the sight of her forlorn expression as she gazed down at the cup just in front of her lips.

He didn’t say anything, instead continuing down the hall and disappearing from her immediate sight. Once he was within the safety of his chambers, a hard glint flashed in his eyes.

The scent of blood and shit unique to one place within the walls lingered on her cloak.


	4. Limelight

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

Beneath you, Zephyr shifted from foot to foot, the crowding of Scouts in the street just before the gate looking disorganized, but each squad in specific places meant to make the transition once outside the walls much easier. You knew where you were in the formation, right with the vanguard–not quite at the front though, since you were still a rookie. Instead, you were in a message position.

Just a few horses in front of you, you could see Captain Levi and his squad, their gazes fixed forward like most of the Scouts. Your hand fluttered briefly to your neck as you gazed up at the giant wall that was casting its shade upon most of the gathered Scouts, your heartbeat quickening as the reality of what was happening settled over you.

Decades without open air and sunlight before you managed to find the key that would allow you to walk on the surface in the sun once more. Never before venturing outside the walls. Now here you were, about to ride out beyond its boundaries into open, fresh air and sunlight where there was no edge where a wall or some other boundary of mankind kept you in.

As if sensing your restlessness, Zephyr pawed at the ground, antsy and ready to move forward. The horse standing behind you at the end of a lead had been jumpy since being handed off to you, but its nerves were only getting worse between the aura you and Zephyr were radiating. Your grip tightened on the reins, gaze fixated on that gate that you were begging to just raise already and let you shoot out into the world.

This was what you were here for. You’d finally made it. Now was the time to throw yourself all in for the cause. Messenger or not, you were going to do everything you could to help.

The brick gate up ahead finally finished rumbling, and a pure white horse holding Commander Erwin Smith reared up.

“Forward!”

Your heart leapt into your throat, and it took everything inside you to wait until the people in front of you started to move forward before your heels pressed lightly into Zephyr’s hindquarters, urging the speckled grey mare forward. Your breaths came rapidly as the brick gate approached, head tilting up on instinct as you went through the tunnel, momentarily plunged into darkness with light piercing through the end before Zephyr burst through, one set of many thundering hooves as you broke past the wall.

Green grass rolled out before you with towering trees dotting along the horizon, stretching as far as you could see, further. The wind whipped at your hair, sun beating down on you harmlessly as you soaked in the unbridled rays, lips parted as you took a deep breath of truly free air.

This was a feeling you would never forget. It was as if the wings upon your cape would emerge and spread wide, carrying you up into the blue sky far above and off to a land where there were no stifling walls real, social, or in your mind, no secrets and constant hiding of who you were.

Feeling eyes on you at your reaction to crossing beyond the walls for the first time, you closed your eyes briefly, the self-imposed darkness grounding you back to reality as you reminded yourself what the goal was here, what you were supposed to be doing. You had a purpose out here, and the others couldn’t afford your distraction.

Your head lowered from its tilted back position, and your eyes opened with focus burning in your gaze, fixed forward as you leaned slightly over Zephyr’s neck. Within a few minutes of running straight forward, the formation began to take shape, Scouts spreading out to the left and right while most of the cargo stayed in the middle. You were one of the ones who went out to the right, falling into place at a relay point with your skittish extra horse trailing just behind Zephyr. Off to your left, you could see Levi Squad, within eyesight but still quite a distance away and placed closer to command than you.

While everyone here had to depend upon smoke signals and their own limited sight to tell them if a Titan was approaching, you were at a unique advantage when it came to the task of spotting Titans. You could hear them long before you could see them, but your sight was much better than the other’s here, as well. You would be able to tell if there was a Titan approaching long before anyone else, which could drastically help the mortality rates of the Scouts if you could use your abilities.

Of course, the matter was complicated by the fact that you would have to wait until there _was_ visual confirmation of a Titan if you didn’t want to look like you were firing flares into the sky for the hell of it, which you were certain would piss many people off very quickly. So, you were restrained to detecting where the Titans were, and keeping track of them until they got close enough.

If it was a big enough threat, though, you would take the risk. You would still have to wait if you wanted people to believe you, but you weren’t going to wait as long if it was something like a horde of Titans or a clustering of abnormals.

That part you had decided ahead of time. The rest you would play by ear and see what happened, or simply play the role you had been assigned for this expedition.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

While Levi and his squad had their duties that went with their position in the long range formation, Levi had his secondary objective to observe L/N from a distance, keeping an eye on her at least partially at all times while his squad handled much of the spotting and message relaying, Levi only giving curt orders when necessary. They certainly wondered what was causing his distraction, but no one questioned it, especially from the serious look on his face.

He’d been watching L/N from the moment they rushed out of the gate beyond the walls, her reaction reminding him strongly of himself, Isabel, and Furlan when they’d first gone beyond the walls.

Before he could have someone snap her out of it so she was paying attention, she’d brought herself back around, snapping back to full focus on the task at hand impressively fast despite how swept away she’d been moments before.

With the more central position Levi’s squad held, they were better positioned to be sent whichever direction they might be needed if shit hit the fan, and the more protected position than the vanguard and the relay lines allowed Levi to put more of his focus on L/N without causing unnecessary risk. No doubt that was part of the reason Erwin had arranged them the way they were for this expedition.

At first, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. She kept her head on a swivel, fired the signal flares at the appropriate time to pass along the message to shift the direction of the formation. However, Levi eventually began to catch the anomaly he might have overlooked if she’d been a little further away, or he’d been a little more distracted by what was going on in his position.

Her head stopped swiveling, her gaze fixing in certain directions for long stretches of time before she would fire off her flares. At the most, her head might twitch in one direction or another, but nothing more. The big give away, however, was the fact that he occasionally caught sight of her loading a flare into her flare gun long before the signals went off. As if she knew it was coming.

Either she had insane intuition, or she was able to see something they couldn’t.

It was a good thing he’d noticed her focus and how she seemed to be picking up on approaching Titans before the vanguard, because it greatly effected how he reacted when she fired a shot before even the vanguard. She went perfectly still, head turned forward right towards an outcropping of trees in the distance. She stayed gazing in that direction for several long moments before she suddenly reached into her pack, loaded her flare gun, and fired a black smoke signal into the air.

Everyone reacted with surprise from the display, Levi included, considering no Titan could be seen, and she was _not_ relaying a signal from the vanguard. Immediately, the others began to grumble and complain at rookie audacity, what she thought she was doing, the usual complaints. Levi, however, was staring hard at her back, noting how she was still staring in the same direction, thinking of how she’d been aware of every flare coming so far…

“Gunther, relay that signal.”

The complaints about L/N stopped, the others looking at Levi in surprise. “Sir…” Petra ventured to say in a cautious tone, clearly not wanting to question him but doubtful of the black flare’s accuracy. Still, Levi could hear Gunther preparing to fire the shot behind him, even as Petra continued. “That signal is coming from nowhere, the rest of the vanguard haven’t even fired anything.”

“Because she’s spotted something they haven’t,” Levi said bluntly, as behind him Gunther relayed the signal, which went down the rest of the line to Command. Erwin’s green shot fired into the air shortly after what must have been a confusingly sudden short burst of signals.

Levi kept his gaze on L/N the entire time, except the direction change, looking for the payoff or justification for her sudden signal. At first, he didn’t think he would see it.

In the distance, within that outcropping of trees that had held her attention before and was now further away from them thanks to the direction shift she’d prompted, Levi saw something clear the treetops. It was hard to catch at this distance, but the scattering of birds from those trees helped confirm what he was seeing. Within a few moments, two fleshy figures of Titans burst through the treeline, one running sporadically forward and the other leaping around, both headed in the direction of the formation.

There was more distance between the formation and the abnormals, thanks to their shift, which gave them more time to respond, but they were still going to collide with the ranks. He could see L/N coiling atop her horse, ready to leap into action if they broke past the vanguard and reached her position, eyes no doubt fixed on the incoming threats.

“Captain, should we go assist?” Petra asked from behind him.

“If they break through the vanguard ranks, yes,” Levi said, gaze sweeping over the other positions in the formation that held less skilled rookies. He didn’t want to risk abnormal Titans colliding with the newbies, so he’d make sure they were stopped there, if the vanguard couldn’t handle them. Instinctively, Levi tensed as the abnormals reached the front lines…and then burst right past towards L/N’s position.

Abnormal, indeed.

Oluo swore as they saw both abnormals barreling towards L/N, who was already kneeling on the saddle of her horse and waited a few seconds for the abnormals to draw a little closer. Levi and his squad were already heading towards them before L/N leapt off her horse, one of her cables firing into the rushing Titan since it was at least keeping stably on the ground, swinging around and away from the front of the attacking Titans, firing the other higher up to try and get a quick shot in at the Titan’s nape.

The second Titan shot over the first in a leap towards L/N, forcing L/N to change direction and release her cable from the first Titan. With a nimbleness that surprised Levi, she pushed off of the arm of the second Titan as it went by to add momentum in the direction she wanted to go, cables releasing again so she could swing between the legs of the first Titan and still avoid it’s reaching arms.

With her cables detached again, she rolled to a stop and got back onto her feet, taking a second to register her position before one of her cables sank into that first Titan’s shoulder and she shot towards it again.

At that point Levi and the others were close enough to do something and had a good grasp on the situation. At Levi’s orders, Eld, Oluo, and Gunther broke off to deal with the jumping one while Levi and Petra rushed to intercept the one L/N was handling. Levi had a pretty good idea of what she was trying to do, but expecting it to go terribly wrong, he was trying to reach her before she lost a limb. Or her head.

The Titan snapped at her as she came within biting distance, but she let loose a burst of gas at the last second to sail over its shoulder, twisting in midair as the men handling the other Titan let out an alarmed shout.

Both cables sank into the shoulder blades of the first Titan and brought her in close with her feet landed just below its nape, and she sliced neatly through, killing it in one stroke. As she turned with the strike, the second Titan came into her view, ignoring Eld, Gunther, and Oluo entirely as it launched for her, still anchored onto the falling Titan.

The cables disengaged so she could fall back and drop out of range of its maw, feet barely missing the teeth as she dropped vertically and headfirst towards the ground.

Eld went in for a quick kill while it was fixated on L/N.

“No!”

“Wait!”

“Eld!”

At angles they could see where the Titan’s attention was trained, L/N, Levi, and Perra, respectively, all shouted out for him not to go for the obvious kill. Its eyes had shifted in the direction the cable came from, towards Eld, and it swung out an arm that caught the wire. Eld was sent careening to the ground, the jumping Titan punching toward him with jaw agape again as the now-injured man got up to right himself, cables still sliding back into place and unable to deploy yet.

Two blurs in opposite directions cut through the air at the front and back of the Titan. Levi was at the back, slicing cleanly through the nape to kill it before it could kill Eld. At the front and coming from the opposite direction, was L/N, slicing through arms and bottom jaw in a wide arc to render it unable to eat Eld.

As they passed each other in the air, they momentarily locked eyes, and instead of fear or anger which commonly filled the eyes of the recruits, Levi saw…exhilaration.

Considering one of his men almost got killed, she better be taking this fucking seriously.

As they both landed on the ground at opposite ends of the Titan body, Levi turned to see her already sheathing her blades and approaching Eld to make sure he was okay and help him to his feet. Gunther and Oluo were close behind, pulling beside them as Eld was brought to his feet and Levi stalked towards them from behind.

“Are you both alright?” Gunther asked.

“That was a hell of a risky move you pulled there, rookie–your leg got cut open when you decided to jump right through its mouth!” Oluo chastised.

Levi’s gaze dropped to her leg, the large tear diagonally across her leg now clear, with bloodstains along the frayed edges of the fabric. But the skin of her calf was unblemished save for a slightly angry red mark running parallel to the rip.

“Hm?” She asked in confusion, turning back to glance down at the offended leg before she twisted so the others could see. “It was risky, and close, but it didn’t draw blood. Just a graze,” she remarked, eyes lifting to see Levi approaching.

He was caught between angry and indifferent, with a bit of reluctantly impressed. He couldn’t exactly chastise her for endangering the others with _that_ out in the open now, could he? She’d been handling them alone off circumstance before they intervened, and when one of his men was in danger of dying, she’d apparently risked a leg to intervene.

It was still reckless, even if in the moment she’d deemed it necessary. She was a rookie out here, she didn’t know the full extent of her capabilities against the Titans yet.

Levi’s gaze slid momentarily to the two rapidly dissipating Titan bodies.

Or perhaps she did…

“Petra, help Eld. Everyone, get a move on, before we’re left behind,” he said instead, turning back to his horse as L/N let out a sharp whistle to call her horse. The dappled grey appeared with the spare horse in tow and still tied to the saddlehorn via the lead so it wouldn’t run off.

Once he was certain everyone was mobile and Eld was being taken care of, Levi led the way for his group to rejoin the formation, L/N racing off to retake her position.

Levi’s gaze wandered back towards the pillars of steam that billowed into the air from the dead Titans.

Why had they both been so set on /her/ that they blew past everyone else?

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

“All right, we need people for the night watch, so if–”

“I’ll do it,” you said before he could even finish, standing up from your spot around the fire as you spoke.

All he had to say was night watch. It was another one of the things you felt that you were the most suited for, considering you were a creature of the night. You would do far better in darkness than anyone else around you.

After volunteering to be one of the people on night watch, you were sent up into the nearby trees to give you a better vantage point, able to gracefully find your way up onto a tree branch without issue. Once where you were supposed to be, you took a seat, resting your head against the trunk as your gaze wandered across your surroundings, allowing your hearing to focus so it was listening for things in the distance or abnormal sounds within the vicinity of the camp. As such, the cacophony of people speaking to one another before heading to bed faded away into a faint buzz in the back of your mind, allowing you to focus on your watch.

This also gave you a moment to reflect on your first day out in the field, and the unexpected consequence of your presence that you had discovered. So intent on contributing to the Scouts and using your abilities to assist them, you’d forgotten some basic predatory instincts.

Out here, the Titans were at the top of the food chain. Within the walls, it was vampires. The Titans were mainly active in the day but quiet at night, and vampires normally thrived in the dark and could not go out in the sun–you were an exception, thanks to something you had taken from a vampire far older and more experienced than you. There was a clear division between the two preventing them from coming into contact with each other, mostly the night and day difference and the literal wall dividing their environments. But you had just entered their habitat, and you were well aware that a vampire could still be killed by a Titan if they got careless, or if the Titan got one lucky bite in. As such, you didn’t consider vampires at the top of the food chain when placed in the same space as Titans, but adjacent to them.

The Titans had focused on you, likely because you were an invasive, competitive predator in their lands. You were a threat to them and their food supply, and they could not safely _feed_ if there was a vampire in the area.

As such, if the opportunity presented itself, they were going to target you first.

_Lovely._

This was new, dangerous information, and you were still deciding how to react to it. Maybe not every Titan would completely ignore a meal in front of them if there was a vampire nearby, but today two abnormals had barged right through the vanguard to get to you. It wasn’t something you could _ignore_.

For a while, your watch went undisturbed, allowing you to quietly stew in your thoughts high up in the trees, before a sound broke through your filtered hearing, and your attention snapped into full focus.

Down below, hidden by the tall grass, darkness, and trees, you could make out the spread out shapes of a wolf pack stalking closer to camp, towards where some of the horses were hitched for the night.

Bold wolves. Or perhaps they were desperate, or had yet to learn to be afraid of mankind. Either way, you couldn’t let the wolves get to the horses, the lifeline out here for the Scouts.

Quietly, since the way you wanted to handle this couldn’t be seen by the other Scouts, you dropped down from the trees, crouching low to the ground and blending into darkness as you moved to intercept the wolves while they were still shrouded in darkness and the environment. When you put yourself firmly in their path, the tension in the air shifted.

For the wolves, while they were in a pack, you were a more dangerous predator, one that they would normally avoid. As such, the pack’s attention shifted, and you let out a low snarl, red eyes flashing in the night and fangs barred as the wolves cautiously stalked closer to you. They loosely encircled you, and you quickly tried to assess each one, looking for the alpha, the one who acted first that the rest followed. The wolves got dangerously close before you managed to pick it out, and you spun around to face the alpha head on, making yourself look big and keeping that snarl.

It hesitated, stared at you for a few moments, and then the grey wolf leapt forward to attack. Anticipating the motion, you plucked it out of the air, arms wrapping around its furry upper body and slamming it into the ground, causing it to yelp and yip as you held it down, pinned, its throat exposed.

You held it there for several moments, making sure the rest of the pack could see the alpha had been bested before you let the wolf up, the large creature immediately taking the opportunity to run and letting out a high-pitched howl for the rest of the pack to follow as it raced away.

Composing yourself once again, you turned back to the camp, heading in the direction of the horses to make sure they were alright, several Scouts intercepting you just before you reached camp.

“We heard wolves.”

“What were you doing out there?”

“I chased them off. They were thinking about going after the horses,” you assured them calmly. “All it took was a well aimed rock and the sounds of quite a few humans from behind to chase them off,” you said, explaining the yips and their sudden absence with ease.

“Right. Back to your posts, or back to bed, whichever it is for you. Go on,” one of the senior officers commanded to get everyone to disperse again. You didn’t say anything more, feeling no need to as you instead used the ODM gear to return to your perch in the trees.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

While Levi was checking his gear to make sure it was still in peak shape for the rest of the expedition, his squad had their fireside discussion about the day’s events, the topics free ranging since Levi seemed to not be paying any attention to them and was a fair distance away.

Mainly, they were talking about the display with the two abnormals.

“Did you see how they charged right through the line towards that rookie?”

“They were abnormals. You have to stop questioning abnormals so much or you’ll drive yourself mad.”

“I’m more interested in that rookie. Did you see how she handled those Titans?”

“No shitting herself or anything–perfectly calm, like she wasn’t even bothered.”

“It was almost like she was dancing around it for a few moments there–you could even call it graceful.”

“And did you see how in sync she was with Captain Levi when they took it down? Even if it was brief?”

“It was still a risky move–she went right through its mouth!”

“That either takes a hefty set of balls, annoying levels of confidence, or sheer insanity.”

“I still swear I saw her leg get cut open on those teeth.”

“Clearly not. She showed us her leg, it came close and she was damn lucky or pulled it off that well. It was just the rip, the red mark, and some Titan blood.”

“Still…she has to be that rookie all those rumors are about, right?”

“The ones about Captain Levi possibly letting a rookie join the squad? Those are bullshit and you know it.”

“I’m not so sure anymore, after seeing her in action. It’s not impossible. They might wait until she’s a little less green, but…”

“Captain Levi did seem a little distracted today. And our position was right where he could see her at all times.”

“So it _is_ possible…it would be weird…and I still think they should wait until she’s not so green…but I wouldn’t complain.”

“It’d be nice to have another girl on the squad…”

Levi stood up at that point, the group’s conversation halting as Levi moved, then resuming when they realized he was walking away from the fire, not towards it.

_Don’t get attached, you idiots. If she’s as dangerous as I think she is, she won’t be around for long._

Moving further away from where his squad was chatting amongst themselves, Levi headed towards the trees where Erwin was taking at least one night shift, using his ODM gear to bring himself up to the tree branch beside the towering blond.

“I heard those abnormals caused a bit of a stir,” Erwin said as Levi settled onto the branch beside him, hardly able to see one another with only faint firelight a ways behind them and moonlight mostly blocked from the trees around them.

“They barreled straight out of a treeline and through the vanguard. Didn’t give them a second thought and went right for L/N.”

Erwin looked at Levi with the way he phrased that last line, like there was more to it. “They were abnormals.”

“Yeah…but even abnormals don’t usually fixate on just one person. Not to mention _two_ abnormals at once.”

Erwin turned slightly towards Levi. “They didn’t pay attention to anyone other than L/N?”

Levi shook his head. “Not until Eld went in for a killshot on the last one. They seemed… _drawn_ to her.”

“Interesting…” Erwin murmured, both of their attention drawn by the sound of wolves yipping and then howling, the sound getting further away. There was a slight commotion at the edge of the camp, with L/N appearing from the darkness in the direction the howling had been and saying a few words before everyone settled back down. She must have chased them off, then.

“There’s more,” Levi added, eyes following her figure as she disappeared up into the trees with ODM, apparently one of the few taking a night shift. “This entire time, she’s been picking up on Titans before anyone else sees them, even the vanguard. She knew those abnormals were coming long before we had visual confirmation.”

“That would explain the odd, lone black flare before the others started being fired,” Erwin murmured, his gaze fixated in the same direction as Levi. “Keep watching her. We won’t be out here too much longer, since we’ll reach our destination tomorrow. You can give me the rest of your observations in an official report when we get back.”

“Right…” Levi muttered, turning away and heading back to the ground to admonish his squad about still being up and get them to get some rest before they talked the whole night away with their conspiracy theories.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

When you returned from the expedition, you were surprisingly exhausted. The Scouts had returned a few hours ago, and as soon as you were free of your duties, you headed up to the barracks so you could crawl into your bed and pass out.

While the first day had gone relatively well besides the obvious for all the horror stories about the Scouts and their expeditions, the second day had not gone so smoothly. Even worse, when the Titans collided with the left vanguard, you couldn’t do anything about it but watch Levi Squad break away as they were dispatched to go help. You were, after all, just a messenger for the right side of the formation for this expedition.

Because of the attack on the left, the Scouts had accumulated a body count and ended up with quite a few injured. It wasn’t bad enough to cause the mission to fail, thankfully, as the Scouts still managed to reach the destination and set up supplies for future expeditions, but after a couple more incidents on the way back, a few more injured and dead were accumulated, and the Scouts were looking rough upon the return to the walls.

On the bright side, if it could be considered a bright side, you were already sitting on two solo Titan kills at the end of the expedition despite being a messenger, you made it through your first expedition, and you knew more about how you would fare against Titans and your usefulness to the cause.

Right now, that was all food for thought at a later point, as you quickly fell asleep once your head hit the pillow and you were finally given the chance to relax.

Unfortunately, it didn’t feel like it lasted for very long. You were woken up by one of your fellow new recruits attempting to get you out of bed, though a quick glance towards the windows told you it was now night–you’d been able to sleep the whole day away. Yet you still felt groggy and tired.

“Hey, L/N. _L/N_! Get up, already. Captain Levi wants to see you. So get to it–last I saw him he was in the library.”

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

“Extraordinary reflexes, stronger than she looks, quick on her feet, calm under pressure, skilled and resourceful with the ODM gear, capable, patient, able to pick up on approaching Titans long before anyone else…” Erwin’s fingers tapped lightly on top of Levi’s official report of his observations about L/N, the papers sitting in front of him on his desk. “All this time and all I can see so far are more reasons to make sure she’s advantageously placed in the Scouts and used to her full potential.”

Levi turned to give Erwin a disbelieving look before it fell into a scowl that was becoming quite common at these meetings between the two to discuss Y/N L/N.

“You can’t tell me you’re not curious about the _how_ , that nothing about her raises questions?” Levi scoffed. Erwin leaned forwards, fingers laced together in front of his face.

“Oh, it does. It seems trying to find out more about L/N only raises more questions instead of providing answers, and I’m determined to start finding answers. But I’m not talking about wanting to know how. This started because you said you had a bad feeling about her, that her motives might be malicious. So far, all you’ve given me is more material to believe her intentions are at least aligned with our own if not good, and more reasons to make sure she stays part of the Scouts, not anything to prove she’s of ill intent.”

Levi looked away, teeth grit. He’d almost fallen into the same trap. Until…

“The night before the expedition, we ran into each other in the mess hall. She’d just come back from the Underground, which I know because she still had that smell on her…as well as the smell of blood." Levi turned to look at Erwin, gaze sharp. "I doubt she was down there healing sick kids considering, as far as we know, the extent of her medical knowledge is the first aid she learned as part of her training.”

Erwin frowned, his eyes probing as he studied Levi’s expression. “That would have been nice to know, sooner.”

“It hadn’t come up, yet. And it’s not exactly something I can put in an _official report_.”

“It’s still not enough to go on, Levi.”

“You don’t think I know that? It’s driving me mad catching these little pieces that suggest something’s off about her, and then failing to get anything else. It doesn’t help that she knows I’m watching her.”

Erwin sighed, leaning back in his seat with a thoughtful look, gazing down at the report on the desk.

“Go ahead and recruit her for your squad.”

Surely he heard him wrong.

“I’m sorry?” Levi asked in surprise.

“Not as a fill member, not yet, anyway. She’s still too green to justify moving her to the special ops team even with how well she did on her first expedition. Have her start as an aid for you and your squad, that way she’s still in a learning and assisting position until she’s more seasoned.”

“And your reasoning for this is…? What if she wants this? Not knowing her motivations–”

“Gives us all the more reason to make this move. As part of your squad, even as an aid, she’ll be directly under your command. You’ll be able to keep a much closer eye on her, find out more about her–I’m sure your squad members will be able to find out things about her naturally on their own time. Keeping her close is the best play right now.”

Levi sighed in frustration. Sure, he’d considered picking her for his squad already, but his suspicions had killed that desire, at least for now. Plus, usually he got to choose if and when he added someone to his squad. He wasn’t too keen on being ordered to add her, even if Erwin had a good reason for doing it.

However, it wasn’t like he was going to tell Erwin _no_. He’d just have to deal with it.

Shaking his head and biting back the complaints he knew didn’t mean a damn, Levi changed the subject. Even though he didn’t confirm that he would do as Erwin asked, they both knew he would.

“What about you? Did your contacts manage to find anything?”

A frown returned to Erwin’s face. “Like I said, more questions with very few answers." He took a moment to open one of his desk drawers, pulling out a report and laying it next to Levi’s expedition report. "I couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere inside Wall Rose besides the last few years after she suddenly surfaced. Even in the town she has listed as where she was born, the closest I came was a girl who shared a first name with her that died tragically over forty years ago. Maybe it’s where she got the name, considering it was a big deal in the town’s history, but beyond that, nothing. Before she appeared on the surface a few years back, she didn’t exist.”

Erwkn held out the report for Levi to take. “Her absence does, however, lend itself to your Underground theory. Especially if you say she was in the Underground the night before the expedition. I suggest you pursue that lead–you know the Underground better than anyone else here.”

Levi hated the thought of going back down there, even if it was to find some answers. However, he finally felt like he had something solid to pursue, and he wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers. He was cornering her, and he was going to pull back the façade and find out what was really happening with her no matter how hard she tried to keep it concealed.

She couldn’t hide whatever it was forever. Especially with Erwin and Levi bearing down on her as hard as they were.

Enough questions. It was time they started getting answers.


	5. Camaraderie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you all to know that I usually don't do this complex cat and mouse kind of thing cause I personally don't usually have the patience for it, but I'm really putting in the effort to quell my impatience and do this right, which is why you're getting so much cat and mouse at the beginning.  
> Not for much longer, though. Answers are gonna start flowing, and then we can get to the REALLY good stuff.

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

While it wasn’t the most shocking thing that had ever happened to you, being instated as a member, but not technically a member, of the Special Operations Squad was definitely up there on your list of most surprising things that had happened to you. The weird in-between position they gave you to try and mediate how unprecedented it was to have a rookie join Levi Squad after just one expedition may have been a glorified lackey, but it was still a position with Captain Levi’s Squad.

Of course, right now, that consisted of doing the menial chores, message delivery, and other small tasks like that, but you were still a part of the team. They’d only given you this aid position they’d made on the spot because you were so new, and it did a decent job of putting you at the bottom of the food chain until you were more seasoned. However, you were still considered part of Captain Levi’s Squad–you had your own private chambers and everything, which meant you wouldn’t have to worry about not waking up anyone while you snuck out of the barracks every once in a while to get something to eat.

Also, now that you were officially being placed with a squad, you knew what people you had to try and made friends with. Before you’d been hesitant–sure, you understood that the Scouts operated in a way that was going to make teamwork and camaraderie important, so you were going to have to be more social, but you still wanted to be careful about who you let get close. You still had an instinct to keep everyone at an arm’s length besides those you /had/ to keep close, which you had rationalized would include whoever you were put under and the rest of your squad.

While you’d known Levi was watching you and the rumors had been running rampant that a rookie would be joining his squad, you’d been well aware that he wasn’t watching you because he wanted to add you to the group–he was suspicious of you. That sparring match you’d had with him had tipped him off, and he hadn’t relented in his pursuit ever since then. In fact, when he’d told you that you were going to be a part of his squad, he didn’t look entirely pleased about it. Sure, Captain Levi was usually hard to read and usually appeared distant or unapproachable, but the look in his eyes had been…colder. It made _you_ suspicious that having you on the squad had not been his decision, or at the very least it had been one he’d made despite his reservations.

Keep your enemies close, right?

Once it was on the table that this might be a position meant solely as an excuse to keep a closer eye on you, it made your skin crawl, and you approached every situation with caution. You had to watch every step, like you were walking across a tightrope and would drown if you slipped and fell into the waters down below.

When you’d joined the Scouts, you knew that it was going to be difficult to balance being a Scout with hiding your true nature, but this was far beyond what you had expected. It made you dearly wish that you had thrown that match back on the training grounds, that he’d never gotten a sense that you were hiding something so fiercely. 

Soon, you were going to be kept up at night with an internal struggle to either stick it out and try to endure so you could do what you came here to do, or if you should just take off and slink back into the shadows.

But you couldn’t bear the thought of going back to that life, as much as it might have been ‘safer’ in a way. You wanted desperately to be here–but did you want it bad enough that you were going to throw all caution to the wind, risk the Captain getting too close to your secret. In the past, before you’d joined the military, you’d killed the people who came too close to exposing you. But that wasn’t an option, here. You knew how valuable Captain Levi was to the Scouts–humanity couldn’t afford to lose him, so you couldn’t afford to touch him. Your only choice was to play this god forsaken cat and mouse game and pray that you came out on top.

Thankfully, the other members of the squad weren’t aware of the cat and mouse you and Levi were caught up in–not yet, anyway. Though they were understandably confused and even a little irritated at the inclusion of a still-green rookie, even if it was as an aid. Maybe the aid position caused a bit more tension, because a new position had been created just so you could be added to the group.

 _Give it time_ , you told yourself as you continued cleaning your private room that had been assigned to you, currently working on cleaning the desk off until it had a polished shine to it. Even if Levi hadn’t added you to the squad because he necessarily wanted you here, you were still going to prove that you could belong here, if they would let you.

* * *

“Did you finish with the stables?”

“Yes, sir. Mucked out, equipment cleaned, horses fed, watered, and brushed, shoes cleaned, all of it.”

“What about cleaning inside, have you done all the tasks you were assigned?”

“All except what Oluo asked me to do. I haven’t got there yet.“

"Well, get to it. And when you’re done come down to the training grounds for some training.”

“Yes, sir!”

As you walked away from Eld, your ears picked up on a passing comment he made to Gunther when he thought you were out of earshot.

“Is it just me, or is it frustrating how easily and quickly she tends to get all of her tasks done? I can’t even find anything wrong with it, so I can’t claim she’s rushing through it!”

“You too? I thought it was just Oluo complaining about that.”

Just as you’d suspected. The others weren’t pleased with your easy access to this position. They weren’t going to say anything because they trusted Levi’s judgement and as far as they knew it was his decision, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to be at least a little irritated. How long had it taken before they’d been added to Levi’s squad? How many expeditions, how much hard work? By all accounts, it looked like you’d had smooth and effortless sailing into a position among the elite.

The fact they kept having you do the shit chores was just a way to kick you back in the dirt and remind you that you were still a rookie, and they were the veterans with experience.

However, you didn’t complain. You could do the jobs faster than anyone without loosing accuracy because of it. Not to mention you felt it might be cathartic for their frustrations. Though, now it seemed they had a new reason to be frustrated.

You’d tone it back to appease them, but Levi already knew what your full effort looked like with the cleaning jobs–he’d know you were holding back, and you highly doubted he’d appreciate that when it came to cleaning, knowing his standards.

Quickly, you made your way back inside and up to Oluo’s chambers, stopping outside the door and giving a firm knock.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s L/N, you said you had a job for me to do?”

“It’s about time you showed up. Get in here!”

After he’d officially invited you inside, you opened the door, stepping inside and expecting to see paperwork or supplies or something else you would have to deliver or put away.

Nope. Oluo was standing there with cleaning supplies presented in the middle of the room. You immediately knew where this was going, and even you could tell it wasn’t going to end well.

“Start cleaning, rookie. I’ve got more important things I have to get done, and I want it shining by the time I get back,” Oluo ordered, complete with a puffed out chest.

You were supposed to follow their orders without question, but you knew Oluo was taking advantage of that fact. Maybe he was hoping having you clean his quarters before Levi inspected them later today would help him look better to the Captain. But you were also certain that Levi would recognize that it was your work and not Oluo’s

For Oluo’s sake, since you were certain he would be the one getting in trouble, you pushed back slightly.

“Doesn’t Captain Levi prefer if we clean our own spaces?” You asked as you picked up the broom. Oluo turned by the door, fixing you with the imitation of an expression befitting a superior who’d just heard a subordinate talk back.

“Huh? How long have you been here, rookie, compared to me?” Oluo challenged. You shrugged, turning back to the cleaning supplies and the room you were supposed to clean.

His funeral.

* * *

The window was open to let in natural light and try to chase away the gloomy atmosphere in your room, silence filling the space except for the birds outside and the scratching against the paper you were currently drawing on. Your eyes, however, were unfocused, looking past the piece you were drawing and instead getting lost in the sea of your depressed thoughts.

For three years you’d been back among people, mingling and being a part of society, but never had you felt so…ostracized. You were _among_ people, but you weren’t close to anyone. Your peers thought you were a haughty perfectionist ice queen and were irritated by how easily everything came to you, Captain Levi was suspicious that there was something you were hiding and was watching your every move with a coldness in his eyes, and your new squad mates were currently using you as the gopher to dump all the chores they didn’t want to do onto you while giving you examining, dubious looks from a distance trying to figure out why you were even here.

You sat alone at meals, you didn’t go anywhere on your days off–the closest thing you had to a companion were the horses, and most of them were still frightened by you.

You wanted to be here, but…it was getting so hard just to _be_ here. Was it really worth it if you were going to spend your days feeling like _this_?

On the paper spread out in front of you, you had a picture drawn from the mental image in your mind’s eye–a single flower in a barren spot surrounded by lush field. The sun shone everywhere else, but this single spot was cast in shadow. Despite the barren ground and the lack of sunlight, the flower was trying to bloom, partially budded, some petals trying to uncurl, but ice covered it’s petals and held prisoner it’s stem, restraining it in the icy chill, needing assistance but nothing around it willing or able to help.

You put down what you were drawing with, a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes as you headed over to your bed and stretched out on top of the neatly made covers, arms digging under the pillow you buried your face in before tears could overflow.

You were surrounded by people, but you’d never felt so _lonely_ , and you wanted it to change. Even though you’d signed up for this and known it would be difficult, you couldn’t take living like this anymore. Something _had_ to change. You didn’t know how you were going to keep your secret while trying to let people in enough to form bonds, but it was the only real option that you had.

The guys were all dubious of you, you could tell from overheard conversations and the looks in their eyes, but Petra…well, you thought if you were going to start trying to build a friendship somewhere, she might be the one to go to. She’d been a bit more…open, about the whole arrangement, and she was actually asking for help and trying to get a feel for you while everyone else seemed to be going out of their way to remind you that you were at the bottom of the food chain right now.

Starting tomorrow…you were going to try and be a companion and hopefully manage to find some friendship. Starting with Petra.

* * *

**_*Petra’s POV*_ **

The mess hall was noisy as ever, making it a little surprising that Captain Levi was still sitting with them at the table after repeating the lecture he’d given Oluo later about doing his own cleaning. Now that Oluo had attempted to have the rookie clean his space and then pass it off as his own, the rest of them got to get the warning to do their own responsibilities without shoving them all off on the new girl.

Petra had felt bad that she seemed to be getting all the crap jobs nobody wanted to do and then some while the others seemed determined to make sure she knew her place, but she hadn’t said anything because not once had the woman complained or looked the least bit upset by it. Until today, Petra had been unsure how to even approach her, something about her making her seem closed off and unreachable.

However, today she had approached _Petra_ , quietly asking Petra if she would teach her the nuances for how everything was cleaned around here. Preferences of soaps and organization, what went where and the like. You could clean till everything shone like a new coin, bur preferences had to be taught or learned. She’d been aware of it, and she had been humble enough to approach Petra for answers.

It was only when she was approached that Petra suddenly realized how alone the woman seemed. She never ate with them–in fact she was certain she ate alone–and she was never seen around anyone from her years as a cadet, she didn’t seem to leave headquarters to visit family, and if you needed to find her she was either alone in her room or with the horses in the stable. She was never _with_ someone unless she was doing her job.

The thing that made Petra realize all this was how she was approached. The woman shifted her weight, a white knuckle grip on the broom in her hand despite visible restraint, her eyes fixed down and to the side, a slight tremble in her hand and a hunch of her shoulders like she was anticipating some negative reaction, or at least reluctance.

It wasn’t right. She was part of their squad, and it was their job to make sure she felt included. Captain Levi must have felt that she was ready on some level to be here, and they were her comrades. At the very least, she should have a place among them–she shouldn’t be so alone.

So, while everyone else was chatting as usual around the table, Petra kept an eye out for their new squad member. It took a while, but when the woman finally appeared and left the line to get her food, Petra attempted to catch her attention without the others noticing.

They locked gazes, and Y/N hesitated before she approached their table, making the others look up as she came astride the table.

“May I sit here?” she asked hesitantly, gaze flickering around at the others and lingering briefly on Captain Levi at the head of the table.

“Of course,” Petra said instantly, gesturing to an empty seat beside her and flashing a look at the others daring them to disagree while Y/N was taking her seat. “It’s about time you started sitting with your squad.”

Her cheeks tinged pink in mild embarrassment, Y/N took a few bites of her meal, clearly uncertain about what to do next.

Well, if everyone else was just going to sit here in awkward silence, and Y/N wasn’t going to take the initiative because she wasn’t sure how, Petra would just have to do it herself.

“So, where are you from?” Petra asked her. It was probably the best, simple answer to get the ball rolling on conversation.

“A small town in Wall Rose–it tends to get overlooked, and it’s usually quiet around there except the occasional scandal.”

“Do you have much family back home?”

“No, it’s just me.”

The way she said it was short, clearly ending the topic there, but she managed to not make it sound mean–just that she wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about it, which made sense. Petra continued to chat with her, asking simple questions to try and learn more about her, basing some off her observations of the woman–like if she was good with animals. Apparently animals weren’t always that fond of her, but she had a soft spot for them despite some animals distaste of her. She thought she might be good with cats or birds, but hadn’t really had the opportunity to test her theory out.

After a bit of back and forth between Petra and Y/N about their lives and learning about one another, the others started to join in as well–aside from Captain Levi, who seemed content to just focus on his meal and listen while everyone talked around him. As the conversation flowed a little more naturally, Y/N started to loosen up and relax, taking charge of the conversation a few times to ask about the others as well as she bloomed from a closed off background character in a novel to a more outgoing and engaging individual. It was quite the change to witness. She still withdrew into herself with more personal questions, especially about her past before joining the Scouts, which gave Petra the impression that the Scouts were a sort of fresh start for the woman. She shared with them why she’d joined the Scouts, which none of them could deny was a valid enough reason after seeing her in action. She had skill, and if she wanted those skills to be put to use, the Scouts were arguably the best place for them, and the faction of the military with the strongest need for them. Besides, who didn’t want to feel useful? Unfortunately, many Scouts died, and some died so quickly it was easy to wonder if their deaths ever had any meaning to begin with, if it had been worth it. However, Petra had the feeling this one wasn’t going to be one of those recruits that appeared and disappeared without ever leaving much of a mark. She just might be around for a while, especially if she was going to take the time to learn from the elites she’d been placed with and stayed grounded, level-headed, and smart.

As the questions drifted away from the personal, in part because of Y/N’s continued reluctance to delve too deeply into the personal, they started peppering her with the twenty-questions kinds of inquiries. What were her likes and dislikes, favorites, hobbies, fears, aspirations, that kind of thing. Some she was able to answer relatively quickly, even if it wasn’t simple, such as having no clear favorite because she liked so many, and other times she hesitated, such as when she was asked aspirations, because she hadn’t given it much thought, being so focused on this current stage of her life.

“What about biggest fears?”

“Oluo!” Petra protested, giving him a dirty look. They were all eating, and this question alone could get extremely dark considering the horrors they faced every day outside the wall.

“What? It’s a legitimate question. Some people are scared of spiders, others heights–though you don’t get much of that one in the military, I think–it could be all kinds of things.”

“I think the answer to that is a little too morbid for dinner conversation,” Y/N said with a slightly weak smile, which made Petra think it might actually be something to do with Titans. If it was, it was probably best they didn’t hear it, just in case.

“Nah, it’s fine, we’re sharing–so what is it? Fire? Dolls? Dead fish?” Oluo asked cheekily.

“Um…being buried alive, actually,” Y/N answered, looking down and picking at her food.

“Damn, that is a pretty scary thought. Wasn’t expecting that one,” Oluo muttered. Petra wasn’t paying attention to him–she was reading Y/N’s body language, how she’d seemed to withdraw into herself and her hand was trembling as she pushed around the food left on her plate. It was most likely at the thought of this fear of hers, if Petra had to guess. The mental imagery alone was terrifying.

At the other end of the table, Levi was staring at Y/N intently, having noticed the same things, and a little more.

“Now that Oluo has officially tried to sabotage the evening, let’s try some gossip: I hear you had a knack for sneaking out in the Cadet Corps and never got caught. What were you doing? I’ve heard some interesting theories,” Gunther said with a perceiving glint in his eyes. Y/N sighed even as _everyone’s_ attention centered on her.

“God damn those rumors are going to follow me for the rest of my life, aren’t they?” she mused, not denying that she snuck out as she took a slow drink.

“Well, Rookie? Care to share?” Oluo asked as she sat down her drink.

She turned to look at the rest of the group, and then with an unreadable expression and in a completely deadpan tone, stated, “I strip naked in the pale moonlight and conduct blood rituals to achieve perfection.”

There was a heartbeat, and then snorts, chuckles, a ripple of amusement through the group at the joke.

“Rookie’s got a sense of humor,” Oluo mused.

Y/N’s lips quirked towards a half smile, taking another drink. “Wish I could say the same for you.”

There was a bit more laughter this time, even as Oluo scowled, no one bothering to hide their amusement at the comment.

“And some snark, to boot,” Gunther snickered as Oluo sulked. “But really, though, what were you doing?”

Y/N sighed, setting down her drink again. “It wasn’t…actually, you know what,” she said with a sparkle in her eye and a mischievous smile. “I hear there’s a pot for the theories. Place bets on it, maybe one day I’ll actually tell you. Maybe I won’t.”

“Oh, come on,” Oluo complained loudly.

“Now that’s just mean,” Petra said with a cluck of her tongue and a shake of her head while Y/N settled back down, visibly proud of her teasing.

Caught up in their banter and companionable discussion, no one noticed how at the head of the table, laid back in his chair, Levi showed no sign of amusement, his gaze fixated on Y/N with a sharp, cold look.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

After you’d taken your first steps towards developing a warmer relationship with your squad mates, things started to go a bit easier for you. You were still at the bottom of the food chain, and the responsibilities as an aid hadn’t changed, but you didn’t think you were getting as much shit dumped on you. It probably helped that Captain Levi had apparently given them a lecture about doing their own chores instead of getting lazy and shoving them all off on her.

For the most part, it was Petra that you were getting close to. The others were becoming cordial, and you had even approached Eld asking him if he could give you lessons on ODM gear technique after hearing he was quite skilled at utilizing the ODM gear. That seemed to have helped the relationship there–frankly, whenever you showed a bit of humility about still having a lot to learn, they warmed up a bit more.

It seemed there had been concerns that you would be an arrogant big headed pain in their asses with how quickly you’d shot into the elite squad, and showing them that you still considered yourself in a learning position and not above anyone helped assuage those fears.

Captain Levi…was as suspicious of you as ever. Except now you were around him enough to feel the chill in his gaze even after you left his presence. That was a relationship you weren’t sure you were in a position to improve. You’d given him plenty of reasons to be suspicious of you, but you were still trying your damnedest not to give him a reason to mistrust you. Maybe it would just take time to prove yourself in his eyes, but at this rate, it was looking like a /deep/ hole you were going to have to climb out of, and for some reason, it just kept getting deeper.

Since it was going to be the more difficult task, you resolved to worry about making a better relationship with Captain Levi later and instead focus on improving the relationship with your squad mates. Firstly, you didn’t want to be a kiss ass, especially cause you knew it would be obvious. Second, ideally by the time you set about improving your relationship with the Captain, he might have warmed up a bit to you.

At the very least, it would be nice if that chill wasn’t in his gaze anymore.

Right now, Petra was the closest thing to a confidant and friend that you had. After you had initially approached her about learning the nuances for cleaning, she’d taken the initiative to help you learn the ropes and adjust to the _other_ nuances of being in Levi Squad, which involved a lot of dos and don’ts. She’d even pulled you aside one evening and sat you down so she could teach you how to properly make Captain Levi’s tea how he liked it, so that if or when he asked for it–and apparently he eventually asked everyone at some point, at least to gauge their tea making skills–you would be ready. You’d been down in the kitchen for a surprisingly long time for that one, since apparently Levi liked his black tea made a very specific way, and additives weren’t usually his preference, so there would be no masking any off taste.

Shortly after, you’d decided to let Petra know about your secret little garden with your tea making herbs. You’d gone when you both had some free time to spare, crouching down beside the garden and talking with her about the different herbs for your blends you’d added and why, complete with a prepared excuse about why the white sage was so far away from the rest and why you wore gloves when handling the plans at all times.

The white sage you told her needed to stay separate because it was aggressive and you didn’t want it taking over the smaller herbs, when you really kept it separate because it burned at the touch and you didn’t want to risk even accidentally brushing against it while you were working on this hobby of yours. As for the gloves, it was the same concept–it let you handle the sage safely without harming yourself, though you told her it was for cleanliness and to keep your natural oils off of the tea herb plants.

As you’d chatted about the herbs in your garden and potential additions (With Petra suggesting adding the plants necessary to make some black tea blends of your own), you’d caught a familiar scent on the breeze, which led you to hone your senses on the individual’s breathing and heartbeat. They were staying a safe distance away so as not to be noticed, but close enough that if something happened they would be there in an instant. They were tense and cautious, listening intently to what was being discussed.

It seemed Captain Levi had reached the point he didn’t trust you alone with the other members of Squad Levi in places that were hidden from the public eye. Your best guess for his presence was that it was out of concern for Petra, wanting to make sure the other woman was truly safe in your presence.

Once again, you understood his cautiousness, and he wasn’t wrong to be cautious…but the level of distrust still cut.

After about a week or so spent developing a stronger bond with your new squad mates, as the time for another feed drew closer, you decided to confide in some of your concerns with Petra regarding Captain Levi–that you felt you might have made a bad impression on him early on and wanted a way to thaw some of the ice between you two that wouldn’t look like bribery or like you were trying to kiss ass. You’d tossed a couple ideas around, already reassuring her that you were already intending to let time tell and let your own personality and abilities do most of the work, but that the chill was getting a little too uncomfortable on your end for you to keep going without making some kind of first step.

With an upcoming holiday and a debate about the best approach, you’d eventually settled on putting together a small gift of personalized tea blends. Since you didn’t have anything mature in your garden for black tea, you had to go into town to get missing ingredients, going with Petra to get her opinion on the best leaves, best tea bags, any additions that you didn’t have in your garden back with the Scouts or that hadn’t matured enough to use anything from it yet like your rosebush. After you had all of your materials, you’d headed back to HQ and stowed yourselves away in the kitchen to get to work.

Petra had the idea to make a couple different variations–there would be plain black tea, of course, but you’d also had some personal blends that you two decided on, mostly based off of Petra’s experience making Levi his tea when asked to, and her past observations of the few times he’d added something to it. You would have to divide and label the different teas in the container, but it would make it a little more personal.

However, you got her attention when you brought out the white sage, gloved hands grinding the herb up into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle.

“What’s that for?” she asked with a slight frown, watching you intently grinding at the white sage to make sure it was all powder and there weren’t any chunks left.

“I’m going…to add a light dusting of the white sage over the tea bags. Hopefully not enough to alter the taste, but it will still be in there,” you murmured, covered fingers running through the powder to check how fine you’d made it.

“I know there’s superstitions about white sage cleansing of evil and bad spirits, but I know the Captain isn’t, and you didn’t take me for the superstitious type. I just figured you had a fancy taste in tea,” Petra mused. You almost snorted, but stopped yourself short considering you were currently directly over the powdered sage and didn’t want it to go everywhere.

“While I’m sure the superstitious intent of cleansing and warding off evil adds a bit more personal good intent, the short version is that it’s also supposed to do wonders for your health. At least according to that book that’s still stashed in my desk,” you chuckled.

“I didn’t know that…a fine addition, then. You really pay attention to that herbology book of yours,” Petra quipped with a friendly smile, which you returned before setting the white sage aside for later, when your tea bags were finished.

Though only you would know it, if he kept the tea and used it frequently–which was fairly likely with how much tea he drank–then he would have white sage in his system frequently. That alone would protect him substantially from any other vampires lurking in the darkness. You couldn’t predict the actions of other vampires, especially with how impulsive they could sometimes be, but if you were this deep in the Scouts, you would rather be safe than sorry, especially if someone with ill intentions managed to work their way in.

Sure, white sage helped with general health, but the real reason you were adding it was for your own peace of mind to help protect Captain Levi. Why not take the opportunity to do so now that it had presented itself. If you were in the position to, you would give similar gifts of secret protection to more than just him, but you only had so much white sage, and right now, he was the one you had an excuse to do this for.

Now you just had to hope he would accept it.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

As much as Erwin had a point about being able to keep a closer eye on L/N by having her in his squad, Levi was finding the arrangement to be…complicating. The way she presented herself, interacted with the others, the hard work she was putting in, he kept finding himself softening towards her because of it. She was a good soldier who truly put in the effort and then some, and she was quickly growing on the rest of the team. She was observant and thoughtful, and she paid close attention to the needs and preferences of the people around her. She wasn’t boastful or arrogant, and apparently was trying to learn something from every member of the squad. Petra had already taken her in like the natural mother hen she was and was around her quite often, but L/N could be seen around the others as well, just not as much.

For fuck’s sake, she’d even befriended his goddamn horse–he’d caught her in the stables sneaking him some oats and getting playfully nuzzled in return. From her track record, he knew she had to have put in the effort for that to happen, too, considering the horses started off at least spooked by her.

But he knew she was hiding something. He couldn’t ignore the signs he’d picked up on until now, how she dodged the personal and tried to keep her past hidden and buried, couldn’t forget the smell of the Underground and blood on her cape, her lack of a past, her unexplained, effortless natural skills, the regular sneaking out to do who knew what. Maybe it wasn’t as insidious as he kept thinking it might be, maybe he should ease up a bit instead of freezing her out and treating her like an already convicted traitor. But he couldn’t shake this _feeling_ that whatever she was hiding was far from _innocent_ , and he didn’t want to risk the betrayal, or getting his squad any more mixed up in it than they already were.

Though how well they were starting to take to her and how she was already being included into the fold, he was starting to get the sense that he was on a time limit before uncovering her as a traitor or something else terrible would cause unexpected damage.

Of course, he could take the paranoid route and assume that it was all clever, carefully planned movements, actions, and words meant to manipulate everyone around her into trusting her and letting their guards down. Unfortunately, not only was that extremely paranoid, but she didn’t lack the sincerity behind much of what she did like certain psychopaths he’d met in the past. She was very clearly hiding things, and she knew she was being watched, but her sincerity didn’t ring hollow because of it.

Fuck, he hated being in this position. And he really hated that he’d agreed to Erwin’s idea to put him in this situation. Even he knew he was being especially cold to her as if it would help put some distance between himself and the warm individual who was working her ass off for him and his squad in case the worst happened. If he was wrong, though, and what she was hiding wasn’t as malicious as he felt it might be, then he was going to have a lot of reparations to deal with going forward, especially since she was already on the fast track to be a part of his squad for a long time moving forward so long as she continued to survive the expeditions.

It would be so much easier if she just came clean. They wouldn’t have to do all this back and forth, cat and mouse, and they could move on. Unfortunately, even though she knew she was being watched and Levi was suspicious, she wasn’t saying anything beyond that comment she’d made the night before the expedition. Just another reason to believe whatever she was hiding was ugly.

There was a knock on his door, and his gaze flickered up to the shut door across from his desk, a faint frown on his face and Erwin’s findings about L/N spread out in front of him as he was in the middle of contemplating next moves.

“What?” he asked, squinting slightly at the door.

“It’s Y/N L/N. May I come in, Captain?”

Instinctively, Levi covered the documents he’d been looking at with anything that didn’t have to do with her, from supply shortage lists, reports from Hange and Erwin about the Scouts in general, anything but what he was looking at about her, knowing she had a sharp eye and not wanting to risk her seeing just how much he was aware of.

“Fine, come in,” Levi muttered, arm lying against the desk as the door opened after he spoke, and L/N came in hesitantly, something in hand.

A delivery, then. It was too much to hope she’d come to finally confess her secret to put an end to their unspoken chase. A pity.

As she approached, Levi noticed that she was rather fidgety, obviously nervous or at least a little embarrassed, and she was clutching the tin box in her hand rather rightly. What the hell was this about that suddenly she was a nervous cadet instead of the relatively calm and steady individual he’d been chasing secrets over up until now?

And then he remembered what day it was.

_You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…_

As understanding lit up in his eyes, he held up a hand. “If this is an attempt at a bribe, L/N–”

“It’s not,” she said firmly, and Levi had to give credit to the balls she had to cut him off like that. She didn’t even seem to regret it, plowing forward before he could start down the path of rejection again.

“It’s a gift, no strings attached or anything like that. Petra and I put it together, it’s for the holiday…and it’s also partially a thank you, on my part,” she said before taking a deep breath, setting the box down on his desk neatly on a clean space front and center before stepping away. “I know I haven’t made the best impression, and you didn’t have to put me with your squad in any capacity, but you did, and I intend to make sure it’s not something you end up regretting.”

It seemed they were both well aware of the game they were trapped in, and she was well aware of her position. He had to give her credit for not bolting, if she knew the position she was in and how much scrutiny she was under. Either she didn’t feel what she had to hide was _that_ serious, which wasn’t likely with how hard she was trying to hide it, or she was that confident in her abilities to keep the truth hidden.

He still wasn’t sure he could entirely believe that this wasn’t a bribe, though. It could very easily be taken as one, or at least a thinly veiled attempt to get him to like her–or at least not be as cold with her. And she’d involved Petra. It was almost like she’d name dropped the other woman in order to prevent him from immediately rejecting the gift, because it wasn’t just her that had put effort into it.

Levi stared her up and down intently, eyes narrowed slightly out of suspicion as he tried to gauge her intentions and sincerity. After a few tense moments where she simply endured his piercing stare without so much as a tremble–there was the collected individual he’d seen up until now–he looked away, down at the papers across his desk.

“If that’s all, you can go,” he said bluntly as a way of dismissal. She was lucky he wasn’t telling her to take it back. He wasn’t openly accepting it, either, he was still going to decide what to do with it, but he wasn’t sending it back with her, either.

It was the closest she was going to get to accepting a gift right now.

L/N snapped a salute, apparently deciding it was better not to say anything and to just take the semi-win and leave. Once the door shut behind her, Levi waited a few more moments before he put the random papers he’d grabbed back where they belonged, pulling the tin close so he could get a look at what was inside now that she’d left.

Opening the tin, the fragrance that escaped immediately told him what the gift was–black tea, but a variety of different blends. And it was good tea, too, if the scent was anything to go by. Groups of the tea bags were sectioned off, labeled by the variant they were, such as the one blend that included lemon, or the one that seemed to have blackberries in it. The tea bags were definitely homemade, telling him the blends were specially made by her and Petra, thought going into the ingredients. There was a white powder dusted over all the tea bags that turned out to be white sage upon closer inspection.

An odd choice…especially since it was on every tea bag and not certain blends.

The wild thought crossed his mind that they might be poisoned, and he scowled, attempting to brush aside the paranoia with the thought that it would be far too bold and obvious of a move, especially with Petra helping put it together. He doubted she would have been able to get such a thing past Petra, too, considering the woman’s experience making Levi’s tea.

 _I’m going fucking crazy_ , he thought to himself as, despite his rationalization, he pulled out one of the tea bags and started methodically pulling it apart piece by piece to make sure there wasn’t anything fatal slipped into the homemade blend. He made sure to avoid touching it as little as possible so it was still usable when he was done, shifting through the ingredients in the blend and making sure he recognized every one.

Nothing suspicious about it. Aside from the odd choice of white sage.

If it really was meant to be a bribe, though, did he _want_ to take it? He didn’t want to waste the tea, so he wasn’t going to just throw it out. He could re-gift it to Hange or Erwin, but he knew that would be a slight, and L/N hadn’t been the only one to make it–Petra had helped.

_Dammit…_

He’d just have to let it sit there until he could figure out what he was going to do with it. He could speculate on conspiracy theories about what it was meant to be, if it really was anything more than a gift, until he figured out how he was going to handle it.

It really could be what she said, though–a gift for the holidays and a thank you, maybe even a peace offering in the hopes things wouldn’t continue to be so tense between them. The contention would continue, though, until he found out what she was hiding.

Levi settled back into what he’d been doing before she came to his office, looking over the details Erwin had provided him, a small frown on his face as he looked over official documents and police reports that were roughly forty years old about a double homicide in the town that had spawned local legends and horror stories to frighten children. Why was this included in the report Erwin gave him? One of the two victims was the girl that L/N shared a first name with, the only thing resembling a tangible connection to the town she claimed as her hometown that Erwin could find.

He was going to have to talk to Erwin and try to get a day or two off so he could go investigate in person. He needed more information than what was in these reports, and he would only find what he wanted by going there in person.

Once more, there was a knock on the door, this time followed immediately by a familiar voice calling, “Captain?”

Ah, this was a meeting he’d been waiting for.

“You can come in, Petra,” he called, finally putting away Erwin’s reports in a safe place as Petra entered the room and headed for Levi’s desk. She didn’t bother asking why he asked her to meet him, simply took a seat and waited for him to speak.

“What do you think about our new member?” Levi asked after he got settled in his seat. Petra’s surprised eyes wandered to the gift still sitting on the desk, a questioning look in her eyes even though she complied to answering his question.

“Do you mean in skills or compatibility?” Petra asked for clarification after a moment’s hesitation.

“Compatibility.”

He was already well aware of her skills–she wouldn’t have even been placed as an aid in the squad if she didn’t have skills to become one of the elite. Skill was one of the first things he looked at when choosing squad members.

Petra seemed even more confused that he was asking after her personality more than anything, but again, she didn’t question him.

“She’s quiet and reserved, for the most part, but after spending a couple weeks with her, once you manage to get her to open up she has a warm and caring personality. She’s a little socially timid, though, I’m sure you’ve noticed; like she’s thinking of how she should act before she does or says something. At least at first, before she gets more comfortable and gets into the flow of conversation.”

Petra paused to consider, a small frown on her face. “She’s a creature of habit, that’s for sure–she’s always wearing the same necklace, all the time–I’ve never seen her without it, and there’s certain places she’s always at during certain times of the day. I’m a little worried about her health, though. I didn’t notice it at first, but she hardly seems to eat. She doesn’t get much on her plate, and she’s always smuggling things that are safe for horses to eat to the stables to bribe the horses instead of eating it herself. She doesn’t _seem_ affected, not yet anyway, but I’m still worried about it.”

Taking the mental notes for later in case that information proved important, Levi pressed a little further. “What about the others? It seems like she’s fitting in well.”

Petra nodded. “She’s getting lessons of some kind from almost everyone, and she’s been a lot better about being social. She’s making a genuine effort to be a part of the squad, and to be perfectly honest, I like having her around.”

“Anything else?”

Petra’s gaze flickered over to the box sitting on the desk again. “If it’s not too presumptuous, Captain–I don’t know what impression she made when you two first met. She mentioned it may not have been the best first impression, but…she really is trying to be worth the chance she’s been given to be a part of this squad, and her attempts appear genuine to me. Perhaps give her another chance to make a better impression.”

Levi didn’t answer her, and he kept his expression unreadable so she wouldn’t see his reaction to her words. It was more incentive for him to close this messy chapter, and it helped clear up his thoughts on how to act going forward if this secret didn’t turn out to be something crazy like treason or murder.

“Thank you, Petra. You can go, now,” Levi finally answered in an indifferent voice. Petra got up and gave a quick salute, then quietly left the room without any further comment. Once she was gone, Levi got to his feet with a slight sigh.

He needed to see Erwin.


	6. Stories From the Dark

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

While taking such a sudden few days off might have caused a couple bumps in the way things were developing around HQ, but he knew Erwin would be able to handle it and smooth things over, so he stayed focused on the task at hand.

Stripped of any signia, symbol, or uniform resembling clothes that could suggest that he was part of the military, Levi was dressed in plainclothes, having taken a carriage out to L/N’s supposed hometown early in the morning. He still arrived with plenty of time in the day to investigate the town and see what he could find on-site, taking in the small, easily overlooked town that was more of a loose collection of homes bordered by farms, with a central farmer’s market to keep some local trade and business going. Any serious buying and selling probably consisted in a day’s trip to one of the larger towns within Wall Rose, but it seemed they had basic foodstuffs here. He managed to find a blacksmith tucked away in a corner between a small grouping of houses, as well as an old, empty building that had a weathered carpentry sign in front of it. So there had been more trade smiths around here, before the town gradually lost those businesses.

Talking casually with the blacksmith informed Levi that a ways past the farms, there was a home that was the reason for most of their outside visitors–people who could afford to would put their elderly loved ones in the care center, and there was a separate building for the mentally ill to live comfortably and get the care they needed as well. Visitors to the town usually consisted of relatives visiting their loved ones in the homes, or they were descendants that had moved away but came back for the occasional hometown or family visit.

Which meant Levi, having no ties himself and not knowing about the homes, stuck out a bit despite his best efforts. The communities of small towns were tightly knit and they knew their own, so it couldn’t be helped, and he would have to deal with the fact everyone was going to be curious why he was here.

While talking with the blacksmith, he also heard that the carpentry shop had been the family trade for the Frazier family–the family who lost the daughter sharing L/N’s first name. With the murder of their only child, there was no one to take on the family business, and the building had fallen into disrepair after the parents had gone to the home outside town.

That had caught Levi’s interest. They’d been in the home for _years_ judging from the sign alone, and the impression he’d received was that only the well off could supply their own stay at the home, or their family members paid for it. If there were no children to pay for them, and they’d only been a small carpentry business in a no-name town, how could they afford to be in the home? He doubted it was by the grace of the community, though it was a possibility considering the tragedy that had happened here.

Moving on from the blacksmith so he didn’t ask too many questions in one place, Levi made a mental note to make his way up to the homes to investigate the still-living parents of the original Y/N. Making his way to the farmer’s market, Levi perused for any small town hidden treasures and struck up conversations, looking for a town gossip to get talking about the town’s history so that he could eventually hear the more personal tale of the double homicide than the technical report Erwin had scrounged up for him.

While trying to get the man selling the baked goods to be a little more forthcoming, Levi overheard a small group of children, three or four gathered around each other as one of the older children attempted to scare the smallest of the group with a surprisingly gristly tale.

“…clawed at the wood of the coffin, screaming for someone to hear her, too afraid to realize her screams took up what little air she had. Her fingernails broke and blood coated the coffin, her elbow busted open as she pounded and shrieked for help, but no one could hear her so far beneath the dirt. Some say she did manage to break the wood, but halfway through the dirt falling on her she couldn’t breathe, and body’s still frozen in her silent scream, so close to freedom, no one above ground aware of the terror she felt before she _truly_ died. Now, so she doesn’t feel so alone, Screaming Sally’s ghost crawls out of her grave and drags children like you from their beds and drags them into her coffin below ground.”

The poor youngest was visibly trembling, tears of fright in their eyes before one of the other kids shouted and grabbed them, making the youngest shriek and cry as they laughed and continued to pick on them.

“Tch.” Levi turned to them, a glare in his eyes that he pinned on the older kids who should have known better. “ _Oi_! Cut it out.”

Spooked by the scary voice, and even more so by the scary man they saw glaring at them, the older kids bolted, with the youngest running away once they were free of the older kids, most likely to run home and find comfort from a parent.

Levi turned his attention back to the stall in front of him, a woman beside him buying a basket of rolls as he scowled over the childishly cruel display he’d just seen.

“That’s one messed up horror story for kids to be telling each other,” he muttered, paying for a loaf of bread and waiting for the man to finish wrapping it for him. The woman beside him turned with a small shrug.

“All the children around here know about that stupid story about Screaming Sally. It’s been around for decades, and at this point, it’s almost a rite of passage to hear it eventually.”

Levi looked at her, sensing he might have someone who would be willing to share if he asked the right questions. “How did it start?”

The woman sighed, shaking her head. “Some poor caretaker for the graveyard by the woods about forty years back snapped after that double homicide and started trying to tell people one of the girls crawled out of her grave. Everyone knows it’s impossible, not to mention the grave was undisturbed when folks checked in the morning after seeing how sincere he was. They had to put him in the home because he kept insisting he saw it, and eventually the story turned into the Screaming Sally legend the kids are always sharing to scare each other.”

Levi’s head tilted slightly to the side, eyes widening momentarily in surprise as the unsuspected connection jumped out at him.

For the briefest moment, he was looking back up at Kenny _years_ ago as Kenny shared some outlandish story to try and scare him. When Levi had called out it’s legitimacy and accused him of spewing a nonsense legend that wasn’t even possible, he’d suddenly appeared a little serious, a small frown appearing beneath the brim of that signature hat of his as he gave Levi the reply that now rang in his ears.

_“There’s always a little truth to every legend.”_

Pretending his surprise was over something else the woman had said, Levi took the chance to try and pry the local story from her.

“Double homicide? Out here?” Levi asked, suggesting that kind of thing _never_ happened in places like this.

In his opinion, they were more likely to happen out here, since it was so damn isolated.

As Levi took his wrapped loaf, the two started to walk together, just a little further down the path as she indulged his curiosity.

“I know–it’s the darkest stain on this town’s history. Still unsolved, too–one of those locked room murders I think they call them. Y/N Frazier and Victoria Schultz. The Fraziers’ daughter had been out late the night before and came to her parent’s home to rest instead of going back to her own home. She was sick the entire next day, and her best friend Victoria came to visit her. Sometime between the moment Victoria and Y/N were in the room together to the time the Fraziers checked in on them a few hours later, some psychopath managed to find their way into the room, tore Victoria apart beyond recognition, and disappeared with the Frazier girl. Without the Fraziers hearing anything amiss! The police thought it might have been the Frazier girl, because it was the only possible explanation considering the bedroom door was locked and any attacker would have had to come in through the window, and neither girl made a sound, so perhaps Victoria knew her attacker–but Y/N’s body showed up on the edge of the woods a few days later, poor girl. They never found out who did it, or what exactly happened. It still haunts the people in the town who are old enough to remember it.”

As the woman spun the more personal version of the tale, Levi’s mind filled in the gristly details that had been in the report he’d read. How there had been hardly any blood left in the mutilated girl left behind lying on the bed, but far less in the room than there should have been, how L/N’s namesake had been found lying just within the forest’s edge, neck bruised and broken, as well as several bones, covered in bruises and lacerations. It was a closed-casket funeral for both. They had no leads, no one with a motive, no mysterious footprint or shadowy figure seen leaving the crime scene. They’d just been murdered out of nowhere, and nothing like it had happened anywhere near the town ever since. It was a sudden, violent anomaly in their history, and one that was going to leave a mark that would never disappear.

Levi said goodbye to the woman with the bread roll basket, standing in the middle of the road with his gaze turned towards the homes he’d been told about, a thoughtful frown on his face.

It seemed he had two reasons to visit this place: the Fraziers and the caretaker.

* * *

Once there, as curious as he was, Levi decided against visiting the Fraziers and asking about the events of forty years ago. From what he’d been able to dig up, it was likely something that still haunted them to this day, and he wasn’t here to terrorize the elderly.

He did, however, pry into who was paying for their stay at the home. Once at the front desk, he suggested that he wanted to pay for their stay, asking after the amount it would take and how often, before insisting whatever payments they were making themselves stop so they wouldn’t have to pay out of their own pockets. At that point, he’d been politely turned down, the secretary informing him that the Fraziers already had an angel donor who was paying regularly for their stay at the home.

“Can I get a name so I can talk to them about splitting the payments?” Levi asked, leaning forward slightly in anticipation.

“I’m sorry, but…angel donors are what we call anonymous donors who don’t have any ties to the family but still pay for their care. We don’t know who makes the payments, only that they’re made regularly and on time, so Mr. and Ms. Frazier can spend the rest of their days here. I have no name to give you, not that I could, considering that would be sensitive information,” the secretary said politely, though there was a bit of a chill in her voice brought about by Levi’s questioning. He ignored it, busy mulling over this new detail.

He had no evidence to support it, no reason to suspect it, but what if the angel donor was L/N? He knew she was looking for ways to cut costs with how she spent her money, it was one of the reasons she had the tea garden at HQ–it would save her money in the future by cutting costs she spent on things like tea. And her lack of personal belongings could also be from a lack of money to buy nice things for herself. What if the money she saved from her salary was going towards the Fraziers’ well-being?

Again, he had no evidence. It was just a thought, a far-fetched theory, but it was something to take note of and consider, just in case it wasn’t far off the mark.

Getting the hint from the secretary and knowing he was at a dead end as to who was taking care of the Fraziers, at least for what he would find here in town, Levi moved on to the next objective.

“All right, well, I also came to talk to someone in the psychiatric home. He used to be a cemetery caretaker about forty years ago.”

Recognition immediately sparked in her eyes, as well as a bit of apprehension. “We’ll need you to sign in, as well as put down a reason for visiting.”

“Fine,” Levi replied, taking the paper she slid over and writing Jacob, no last name–not that he’d have one to give even if he was using his actual name–and then wrote down social visit before handing it over. Her eyebrows rose slightly and her gaze flickered up to him from the paper, and Levi gazed back at her calmly, waiting patiently for her to at least direct him the proper way.

“Room seventeen. Follow me,” she said, leading them out the door–since they’d been in the home for the elderly–and a little ways away to the other building that acted as the psychiatric home. Once inside she led Levi up two flights of stairs and down a fairly long hall to let Levi into the room marked seventeen in white paint. “Mr. Briarton, you have a visitor,” she said after opening the door, allowing Levi to step into the room and take in a man in his late fifties, early sixties, suspicious pale green eyes narrowed at Levi as he stepped inside.

“I don’t knows you,” the man rasped.

“Jacob,” Levi said bluntly, stepping deeper into the room and staying conscious of the fact the secretary was temporarily lingering to make sure everything was going to be all right. “I came to hear your story.”

“Hah? Here to mock an old man?” Briarton sneered.

“No. Just to listen,” Levi responded simply. Briarton sized Levi up for a moment, then looked at the secretary still standing in the doorway and gave a small wave.

“We’re fine, Janice, you can leave now. I’s knows the rest of you’s is tired of hearin’ my tale.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Briarton.”

“Eh,” he grumbled, and Janice sighed and shut the door, leaving the two of them behind. “Why exactly are you’s interested in hearin’ my story? Everyone else says I’m’s crazy. Locked me up for it, too!”

“I’ve heard the town legends. Someone I knew used to say there’s always a bit of truth to the legends. So I’m here looking for the truth,” Levi answered, leaning up against the wall with arms folded over his chest.

“Hmm…” Briarton hummed, contemplating Levi’s reason before he sighed. “I’s guessin’ you’s already heard ‘bout the murders, if you’s here.”

At Levi’s nod, Briarton skipped over the events that came before, and went right to talking about the burial. “Closed caskets they’s were. Victoria had a pine box, Mr. Frazier insisteds on makin’ Y/N’s hisself, out of willow. We’s buried them midday, six feets down in the grounds, six feets dried earth on those boxes. I’s told they’s were both dead for sures, no comin’ back–specially poor Victoria. Schultz’s weren’t allowed to sees hers it was so bad. Course we’s all thoughts abouts it, we’s all hoped back then the killer’d get caught. People kept comin’ by till it gots too dark and I’s closed the cemetery for the’s night. My’s job was to make sure no ones messed with the graves, and I’s was patrollin’ like usual, and for the’s longest time, I didn’t hear nut-thin. But sometime in the wee hours of the mornin’, as I’s was comin’ up on the girls’s graves, I saw somethin’ movin on the ground on tops of one. I’s went to yells at them, to tell ‘em kids to scram, cause that’s what I’s thoughts they were. But when I’s got close enough to see a bit better, I’s realized they’s was comin’ up from the ground–outta the _ground_. I’s was frozen in place, watchin’ them’s drag themselves out of the dirt, clawin’ across the ground likes a wounded animal. I’s was tryin’ to scream, but I’s couldn’t makes a sound.”

Briarton stopped, his wide eyes turned towards Levi. “Do you’s know how heavy the dirts is on a coffin? How hard it is to break open a coffin? Impossible’s what it is! My’s brother once locked me’s in one to scares me, and my’s mother lost it whens she found out. I’s was kickin’ and screamin’ for what’s felt like hours tryin’ to break out, but all I’s got from it was bloody hands and elbows. Ands that was _without_ the dirts on tops of it. But I’s swears this girl busted out and crawled outta hers grave. Even if she’s managed to breaks the coffin, she’d’da been crushed bys the dirts. But she’s still crawled outta hers grave. She’s stood up, covered in fresh bloods and dirts, and she’s shoved dirt backs into the hole she’s crawled outta like a drunkard, gaspin’ and wheezin’ and wailin’ like a banshee, an’ then she’s disappears into the night. An’ I’s ran for help, jus’ to get calleds crazy and locked up in here.”

Levi listened to Briarton’s tale in silence, studying the man’s face closely as he spoke to see if the man truly believed every word he was saying. The terror in the man’s eyes was real, though, as he spoke of the impossibility of the haunting image, and there was no trace of insincerity in his face as he spoke. He truly believed in the tale he was telling. Considering the impossibility of it all, Levi also doubted, but he wasn’t going to call him out on in–enough people already believed this man crazy, Levi wasn’t going to add himself to the mix.

He only had one question.

“Who was the woman who crawled out of her grave?” Levi asked steadily, though the crawl of his skin as he said it told him he already knew the answer. He just wanted to hear Briarton say it.

“Y/N Frazier.”

* * *

The day had cooled–in fact, it was starting to feel chillier, the sun frequently hidden by clouds that seemed to be gathering across the sky, hinting at fouler weather on the horizon. After taking his leave of Briarton at the home, Levi went looking for the now infamous cemetery–infamous in his mind, at least–and had made his way to the grave of one Y/N Frazier, where he now stood in silent contemplation, staring intently at the headstone that had engraved upon its surface the girl’s name, a birthday and date of death that showed she had barely been in her twenties, and a brief, “Beloved Daughter.”

He wasn’t really seeing the grave anymore, though. His mind was a flurry of thoughts, theories, memories, information…none of the connections he’d made here made any kind of sense to him, but there were far too many to be ignored. There was _something_ here, _something_ that seemed to be staring him in the face, but he couldn’t see what it was, so he couldn’t use it. Not yet, anyway.

Maybe Briarton really was crazy, maybe he hadn’t seen Y/N Frazier crawl out of that grave that night and he’d simply snapped like everyone suggested he had. But there was nothing to have caused him to snap, no trigger. Not to mention, the sheer coincidence was far too strong to _be_ a coincidence.

So, he entertained the possibility that the bizarre and impossible happened, that Y/N Frazier somehow survived, a mistake had been made somewhere and she was buried alive, and managed to crawl out of this very grave. Ignoring the impossibility of that scenario still didn’t give him many answers. If Y/N Frazier was still alive, she would have been sixty, seventy years old by now. L/N back at the Scout Headquarters was in her early twenties, and very clearly /not dead/. So, L/N definitely wasn’t this Y/N Frazier.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be related somehow. If the original girl did survive, it would be possible for L/N to be Frazier’s daughter, maybe even grand-daughter, though that was starting to push the theory beyond what he was willing to suspend believing as impossible.

One thing the Screaming Sally horror story had made him remember, and that Briarton’s recounting had brought to the front of his mind to offer him another connection, was the conversation the other day between the rest of his Squad and L/N.

He remembered the tremble in her hand, the stillness in her posture, the flash of soul-deep fear, trauma, and pain in her eyes as L/N had softly stated that her biggest fear was being buried alive.

He had something big here, but he wasn’t sure where it fit in this messed up puzzle he was trying to solve, and was missing some key piece that connected it to something else. He needed more than ever to see what she was doing in the Underground when she snuck out at night–whatever it was, he was convinced at this point it was the missing piece he needed to make sense of all of this.

But first, he needed to do something that would give him a definitive answer amongst all these legends and tall tales.

* * *

It was a new low for him, he knew that. The entire ordeal felt _wrong_ and filthy on an entirely new level, but it was something he _had_ to do. No one else had thought to look, to disturb the grave of one of the murdered girls to see if there was any validity to Briarton’s claims, to the stories of Screaming Sally. Everyone brushed it off as nonsense and went about their day, probably because it was so _certain_ , and it was easier to believe the horror stories were nonsense.

Levi didn’t have that luxury. He didn’t have the certainty, and the easier route was not the one he was going to take. He needed answers. So, he’d returned briefly to Headquarters in order to enlist Erwin’s help to give him the opportunity late that very same night to dig up the grave and settle once and for all whether Y/N Frazier had died. It would help clear up some of the questions and theories when he found her body in the coffin, and it might put them back at square one in figuring out why this place and this name had been chosen by Y/N, but it would help bring them back to a world that made some sense, and it would help weed out a few questions that these legends and stories had brought up.

He didn’t want to think of the implications if the grave was empty. He doubted it would be, but if it _was_ …then this entire mess went far deeper than he could ever imagine.

Perhaps that was why Erwin agreed to help him, why he’d paid off the caretaker to make sure the grave was empty but leave the section Levi was going to be in undisturbed until Levi left. Erwin clearly hadn’t approved of disturbing a gravesite, especially the gravesite of a murder victim, but Levi had strongly believed it was necessary despite his own misgivings, so Erwin had relented.

Now, Levi was in a hole that passed his head, digging the last few inches to the willow coffin Y/N Frazier had been buried in, filthy and tired but determined to get to the bottom. Just a little further, and he would have his answer. He would see the bones in an undisturbed grave, fill in the grave once more, go home, wash up, hate himself for a while for doing this to confirm what he already knew, and then go back to trying to figure out why L/N seemed so deeply connected to this place.

He hadn’t found any bodies frozen on its way to the surface, so he could already rule out the legitimacy of the children’s scary story about Screaming Sally, at least.

The shovel Levi was using scraped against something solid, and Levi paused. Here it was. He’d found it.

Kneeling down, Levi started brushing away at dirt so he could find the coffin lid, fingers brushing against wood, hand brushing a little harder to smooth away dirt–

He had to pull his hand back as he unexpectedly came into contact with splintered wood sticking up into the dirt, piercing his hand and drawing blood as he jerked in surprise, breath catching.

No…

A few more careful brushes with his hand, and he was staring at a coffin lid that had been busted open, shards of wood buried in dirt, but the hole clearly enough for a person to crawl out of. He froze where he was as he stared at the sight before him, the odd, irrational fear that a hand was going to burst out of the hole and grasp his wrist strangely flashing through his mind before he pushed it aside. He wasn’t breathing anymore, an admittedly trembling hand reaching out to pull back the lid, just to double check and confirm what he was seeing.

The grave was, in fact, empty. The coffin was busted open with gouges that had old red stains upon them, as if it had been punched and clawed through from the inside.

His blood running cold and his breaths shallow, Levi had to fight not to think of the haunting image Briarton had described, the fear in L/N’s eyes, and the mental image of a woman trapped in this grave screaming and crying for help, having to tear apart her own body and defy all odds to crawl her way to the surface, tried not to imagine the terror of being buried alive like this.

Kenny had been right. There was always a bit of truth to the legend. He never imagined it would be this much truth, though.

* * *

When Levi returned to HQ, the first thing he did was clean himself up and get changed. Then, he made himself some of the tea L/N had gifted him, choosing one of the blends meant to calm in the hopes that it would help settle his nerves after what he’d seen.

Outside, he might still appear stoic, but inside, he was shaken.

Once he was clean, he had his tea, and he felt he had a better grip on himself internally and he was ready for the conversation, he went to Erwin’s office and very solemnly relayed his findings to the man, who looked no less disturbed by this unexpected turn of events than Levi had been. They’d expected some kind of secret while digging into the truth about L/N, they hadn’t been expecting a full blown conspiracy on this level.

Once Erwin was up to speed on Levi’s findings, they started to hash out some theories and details, both of them well aware that they were still missing something crucial as they attempted to make a broader picture with the pieces they were currently in possession of.

The running theory they were working with was that Y/N Frazier was L/N’s mother. It was the most logical connection they could come up with, even though it dumped a whole new slew of questions into this mess.

Why did Frazier run after she crawled out of her grave? Why not return to her home and family, alive and well? Why leave the town behind and everyone in it believing she’d died so terribly? Why never come back to tell who had attacked her and her friend Victoria? What happened that night forty years ago? How had she managed to crawl her way out of a grave? Why had she instead disappeared somewhere inside the walls never to be discovered or heard from again, hiding her true identity remarkably well? Or more importantly, how had she been alive? How did she survive those injuries? Had a mistake been made and she’d been assumed dead? Was the report faked?

How was the Underground supposed to come into play in all of this, and what part did L/N have in it as well? If Frazier was indeed L/N’s mother, was Frazier still alive and living in the Underground? Was that why L/N went down there every now and then? Why not bring her mother to the surface with her? Why, when she came to the surface, did L/N take Frazier’s first name and not use her last name? Why not use her real name? How did the events of forty years ago play into now, and how had it had an affect on L/N?

As always, whenever they uncovered _something_ about L/N, it always came with a thousand more questions. They could theorize all they wanted, but it wouldn’t bring them closer to finding the answers that they craved at this point.

And still, despite the shock and the…unease he had felt to find the empty grave and realize the reality of what happened in that town–or at least part of it–Levi still felt like there was another reality altering twist in this dark tale that was unraveling in front of them that would be far worse. He still felt like they were far off the mark, that the still failed to understand the reality of what they were stepping into. More than ever, Levi felt there was something dark behind this, and he began to feel the first hints of _malice_ surrounding these secrets.

Whatever L/N was hiding, at this point, Levi _knew_ it had to be dangerous.

Erwin’s concerned eyes probed Levi’s expression as Levi gazed at the empty teacup in front of him, well aware that despite his feeble attempt to calm his nerves and thoughts, he wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight.

“Levi–” Erwin started to say in a grave tone of voice, but Levi cut him off. He knew what Erwin was about to say, and he already knew what he had to do next.

“I know. All I’m waiting for now is for her to make the next move. This time, she won’t shake me.”


	7. Subversion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m gonna admit, I was half asleep writing the first half of this cause the fatigue hit me HARD once I got home.
> 
> I felt like I was missing something, but no matter how many times I looked at it, I couldn’t think of what it was...If it occurs to me, I’ll probably just find a way to work it into the next chapter, lol
> 
> Also if you want a good soundtrack for this series, honestly, all you gotta do is listen to the Forgotten Odes album by Eternal Eclipse, I always pull it up when I’m writing these XD

_***Levi’s POV*** _

“I’ve been trying to catch her sneaking out for weeks, now, Erwin, but it’s like she knows when I’m awake and watching for her. I can never catch her when she’s leaving, it’s always when she comes back.”

Levi paced slightly in front of Erwin’s desk out of agitation as he stressed why, after all this time, he still hadn’t managed to follow her into the Underground and see what she was doing.

“Do you at least know when she usually sneaks out? The time, or the days?” Erwin asked calmly.

“It’s always when everyone’s asleep…and it is fairly regular. Every week, I think, though the exact day varies.”

“If you can’t follow her, then you’ll need to get ahead of her. Get down there before her. You know the window of time when she’ll be down there, and you know the Underground.”

“But I have no idea what she’s doing down there. It could be anything–and the Underground isn’t a small place where I can wander around and /hope/ I run into her.”

“Then narrow down your search based off your theories. We considered she might have family down there, so you would be looking at residences, or asking around about a woman of her description. And your theory of the worst she could be up to–”

“Murder or treason. I know the places you’d go for that–more so than normal, anyway,” Levi murmured, mind already conjuring the worst areas in the underground, the places where the Underground’s worst elements like to stalk the streets, the areas of the highest risk, the worst gangs, the shadiest deals.

The residence search could take months–no one was going to want to talk to a soldier, a surfacer, even someone who had once been a part of the Underground. Not to mention, they had no idea what Y/N Frazier looked like, or what name she was going under while she was hiding in the Underground–if she was, in fact, hiding in the Underground.

Besides, shouldn’t he rule out the worst, first?

“I know where to start,” Levi said decisively. “It’s still going to take some time, though, because she’s still aware I’m watching her, and she’s good at shaking tales and evasion. Not to mention part of it is going to be based on luck–that I manage to go to the right place at the right time without knowing where she’ll be.”

“You’re good at what you do, Levi. You’ll find a way.”

So began the unpleasant ritual of Levi going down into the Underground every night of every other week, all in the name of hopefully, eventually, managing to find L/N. All it would take was one glimpse, one time seeing her, and he could follow her, learning from the mistakes of last time to make sure that he didn’t lose her this time.

And he could finally find out what was happening below ground–what had been happening for years since she’d suddenly appeared on the surface.

* * *

While Levi had made a name for himself Underground, enough so that it became general knowledge not to test him, he hadn’t gone around looking for the kind of trouble that would have brought him to the places he found himself in, now. He’d always been aware of these dark holes in the Underground, and on a few unpleasant occasions had to make a trip to one of them. The worst elements of the Underground were found in these holes–she shadiest deals, the scum of the earth, the darkest corners with the most blood and carnage seeped into and tainting the earth around them.

Levi’s every step in these places was careful and quiet, his guard always up, his hood always drawn to hide his face.

Even with the name he’d made down here, he was cautious to use it as a warning sign to keep danger at bay. Not only did he want to avoid sticking out and alerting L/N to his presence if she was down here, but there were always going to be the idiots who wanted to challenge someone who’d made a notorious name for themselves like he had. There might be more than normal who wanted to test him if they knew who he was, people who thought that he was a prime target because his name still stood, but his time above ground might have made him soft.

A terrible, foolish notion, really, since his time above ground and part of the Scouts had only made him more dangerous.

He’d been coming down here regularly since his talk with Erwin, scouting the area and looking for any signs of L/N, whatever they may be. Not many people down here were the talking type, and those who were couldn’t give him anything about any surfacer woman prowling the streets. The only thing they could tell him was to not wander these more dangerous parts of the Underground alone because people who did tended to turn up dead or go missing.

That wasn’t news to him. He was already well aware of the dangers of these parts of the Underground that had spawned chilling legends even for the people who saw the darkness of the Underground daily. He knew what he was doing was dangerous, which made L/N’s presence here all the more questionable if he did manage to see her.

Levi glared fiercely at a man who’d been giving him the target sizing look after glimpsed his clean surfacer clothes. The man slunk back into the shadows and Levi’s skin prickled, his senses on high alert for any kind of ambush someone might be tempted to spring on the man leaning against the wall at a four way intersection. He was keeping his head down to keep his face well shielded, but his eyes were constantly flickering around to take in his surroundings, to watch every figure that passed or came down one of the alleys, tense and ready for a fight every time someone came close to him.

This search was slow work, but with no hint to L/N’s motivations for being down here besides the scent of blood on her cloak, it was the best option he had.

A familiar, dark robed figure flashed by the opposite end of the alley on his right, and Levi straightened, disbelief flashing through him. Surely that hadn’t been…

Before he lost her in his disbelief, Levi moved quickly through the alley to at least get her within his sights, being mindful not to get _too_ close, even though he needed to at least be able to confirm that it was _her_.

Sticking to the shadows, Levi peered around the corner of the alley, just enough so he could see the cloaked figure and watch them as they continued down the path at a fairly leisurely pace, as if they were strolling along the lakeside instead of through one of the most dangerous parts of the Underground.

He was fairly certain that was her cloak. It was the right color, and a quick glance down revealed that yes, it was long enough to drag along the ground like hers did, but at the moment it was gathered and tucked into the waist to keep it from dragging through the filth, keeping it just above the ankles instead.

And those boots were dark brown, leather, suspiciously similar to the Scout’s uniform–even though he couldn’t see the rest from this angle, he was willing to bet they went up to the knee. The height was right, the posture seemed militaristic–it was a hard thing to shake, especially when still in active duty and so soon after graduating from the cadets, to boot. Levi held his breath, watching intently and hoping for something a bit more defining that could give him one more bit of evidence to convince him it was her, besides this gut feeling of his.

She took a turn, and while she kept her head down, hood hiding her face, he saw a flash of hair, and glimpsed the civilian clothes underneath–

Civilian clothes he _knew_ were hers because of the day he’d gone through her stuff and saw what she had. She didn’t have much, so it was easy to tell this was one of the four pairs she owned.

Not wanting to lose her like he had that first night, Levi hurried forward, keeping his steps as quiet as possible. He had to give her more space then he was used to giving someone that he tailed–he hadn’t forgotten how during the expedition, she seemed to have immensely attuned senses, with how quickly and easily she could pick up on what no one else could see. He still didn’t want to _lose_ her because he fell too far behind, but he had to be careful– _something_ kept tipping her off to his presence, and while he didn’t know what, he had to control everything he could and make it harder for her to notice his presence. Distance was his friend, right now.

It was hard, trying to trail someone while having to put so much distance between them that she frequently turned out of sight, but he kept it up, heart pounding in anticipation as his mental map of the area tried to come up with where she was heading. Right now, it just felt like she was aimlessly wandering, like there was no real direction to where she was going. What the hell was she doing?

After several minutes of following her around like this, Levi started to grow impatient, wondering if she was aware he was following her and was just walking random places until he got bored and left. If anything, it was more likely to make him confront her.

Except he needed to see what she was really doing down here, and if she was aware he was following her, that wasn’t going to happen.

Another shadowy figure entered their line, in front of Levi but behind L/N. It was a man, staying far enough back that he clearly wasn’t walking with her–another tail. Someone with more sinister intentions, too, Levi would guess, by the way he seemed to be stalking her. With how far back Levi was, he hadn’t been noticed by this new party, but he was close enough that Levi was certain L/N had noticed them.

Except…she wasn’t trying to shake them. She should have been able to do it with ease after she had lost Levi so easily that first night, but she didn’t do anything differently. Her pace remained the same, unhurried and with no real direction, even as the intruder got gradually closer.

_What the hell?_

Was he wrong? Was it someone she knew that she was meeting up with? No, that looked like something else, Levi knew _exactly_ what this was, he’d seen it enough times to recognize when someone was about to get jumped.

On the other hand…this was perfect for him. Horrible as the initial thought might have been, if he tailed her tail, it put plenty of distance between himself and L/N, and as long as her tail didn’t lose her, even with her completely out of sight he wouldn’t lose track of her. And if something went wrong, well, he _was_ right here.

Levi shifted his cloak aside at the waist, turning slightly and waiting a few moments before he fired the cables into the nearest building, using it to get onto the roofs and nothing more. The rest could be on foot, no more use of the gear. ODM had a very distinct sound any soldier who had been around them as long as L/N had would recognize instantly, so he didn’t dare use it any more times until he’d found what he was looking for. He didn’t know how keen those remarkable senses of hers were, if it was her hearing or her sight or hell, even her nose like Miche, that had allowed her to spot those Titans. Because he didn’t know how, he couldn’t risk it.

Now with the advantage of a higher vantage point, Levi followed L/N’s tail from quite a distance, able to see him further and more comfortably from so high up, his footsteps still light and silent even though he was alone on these rooftops.

Being up here reminded him of several things he hadn’t fully realized when he’d lived down here, or that he’d learned to ignore or had forgotten in his time above ground. How there was no wind down here, which was disconcerting after so long above ground with fresh air and cool breezes. How dark it really was, even with the orange glow of firelight from homes, impacting his visibility and making it hard to pick out details from a distance. And the _stench_ –he’d been blocking it out, something he’d trained himself to do down here when he wasn’t in his own space that he could keep clean, but now that he was higher up and not in the thick of the shit, the air wasn’t quite as thick with it.

Slightly. Just barely.

The man he was following sped up and took a sudden turn into a narrow alley, causing Levi to speed up his step as well, keeping an eye on the opposite end of the alley in case he exited the alley before Levi could reach it. Crouched low so that he wouldn’t be spotted if someone happened to look up, Levi reached the edge of the building before the alley, his hand placed lightly on the dirt-covered edge as he peered over with care, trying to lean far enough he could see but where he _couldn’t_ be seen, or at least would hardly be seen. L/N’s tail hadn’t left the alley, so they should be–

Before the alley became visible, Levi realized there were no sounds coming from the alley–no sounds of a fight, no drip of blood, no talking, _nothing_. If her tail had caught up to her, there should have been /something/ coming from the alley below.

A few seconds more, and he had visual confirmation that the alley was empty, even though he hadn’t seen anyone leave it from either end.

Levi kept himself calm, not allowing himself to even worry about losing sight of them–he didn’t have the time for that. Clearly he’d been far enough behind that he’d missed something that had happened. Maybe they had cut through the building opposite the one he was standing on. There were no sounds coming from there, either–it was silent as the grave in this part of the city, unsettlingly enough. But it let him know they weren’t simply hiding in one of the buildings beneath him.

He knew this area–he knew the _Underground_ , had grown up here, walked these streets or at least mapped out in his mind the best and worst places for all kinds of situations. He could figure out what had happened. Whether she got the drop on her tail or her tail had successfully jumped her, if they weren’t here they would have gone somewhere discreet, somewhere private that was also nearby. Not a residence, and anything that was dilapidated beyond even entry wouldn’t work. What was the best spot for that criteria that was also nearby, close enough it could be quickly ducked into without anyone noticing?

Levi jumped over the edge of the building and dropped back down into the mud, knees bent to absorb the impact before he quickly shifted, navigating the streets quickly and with a purpose as he closed in on the building that came to mind. He was still careful to be quiet and stealthy lest he spook L/N and lose his chance, but he was now running out of time–the longer they were out of sight, the greater the chance he would fail to see what was happening. And he’d come so close, he couldn’t let the opportunity slip past him again.

Her being in trouble didn’t even cross his mind–he knew she could have shaken that tail if she wanted to, and she had beaten _him_ in a sparring match. Even if that tail jumped her, he doubted she would be the one in trouble.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

The one thing you hated the most about coming to the Underground to hunt was the _smell_. With how sensitive your senses were, it was absolutely horrid for you. It had taken all of your focus and much of your time when you’d first come down here to learn how to block that foul smell out, though usually it involved handicapping your sense of smell altogether–except for with blood. Blood always pierced through any mental block you’d constructed for yourself.

Still, you were down one sense when you came down here to hunt, refusing to breathe through your nose so you wouldn’t become nauseous, sickened by the stench in the air.

The only time that changed down here was when you fed–when the scent of blood filled your every breath with your teeth latched into your most recent kill, warm at first but growing gradually colder as you drained the life from them, a hand over their mouth to muffle any sound or screams until they could make them no more.

Of course you had known about the shady individual tailing you–you had wandered aimlessly in one of the worst parts of the Underground _specifically_ so you could draw someone out, could lure in one of the many victimizers that lurked in these dark corners and turn the tables on them, making their chosen path of victimizing and terror a fatal one. As soon as he entered the dark, isolated alley that you had turned into, you had grabbed him and dashed away with that inhuman speed of yours, pulling him into the nearest abandoned, unowned building where you immediately sank your teeth into him to satiate the hunger that had started to claw at you once again.

Hidden in the darkest corner of the abandoned building, the man had stopped moving beneath you, body turning cold, though from experience you knew he still had more blood to give. You were going to take it all, so it would last you just a little while longer before you had to delve back into the Underground’s cesspool for a fresh kill to satiate the hunger again after it returned.

By now, this was normal for you. You had been doing it for decades, and had long worked out your feelings over the moral implications of it all. This was just your way of life, how you survived. And it would continue to be for years and years to come.

One thing about scents down here–there was no wind to carry them away or towards you. So when you picked up on someone’s scent, it usually meant they were close… _very_ close. Especially since you went out of your way to _block_ scents down here unless you were in the middle of a feed, like right now.

As such, you stiffened when you caught the beginning traces of a familiar scent, one that was usually carried towards you on a breeze and let you know you were being watched. Tea leaves, cleanliness or cleaning products, hints of mint that might have just been a figment of your own imagination because it was something you associated with a clean smell.

Levi. And if you were catching his scent strongly enough for it to pierce through the blood you were feeding off, then he was _dangerously_ close.

Immediately, you tried to gulp down every last drop you could, wanting to still finish so you wouldn’t have to come back down here so soon, even though your instincts were yelling at you to get out of here before he found you. As a result of your suddenly rushed attempts to finish your meal, you made a bit more of a mess than you usually did. Blood smeared across your face and dribbled down onto your shirt, some unfortunately falling to the ground below as your teeth tore into the man’s neck in an attempt to get this last bit to gush out.

You could hear him, he was just outside the building, you couldn’t wait any longer, you’d already waited too long.

How much had he seen? How long had he been onto you? How had he _found_ you?

You could worry about that when you were safely back at the Scout’s headquarters and in the process of cleaning up any evidence you’d ever been to the Underground, right now, you had to _leave_.

Now you didn’t even have time to try and hide the body.

Teeth unlatching from the man’s neck, hood pulled low over your head to hide all of your features, you finally bolted, heading for the opposite side as you heard the door open, worried that you still had been too late, that he might have seen your hasty exit, or at least a flash of your cloak disappearing around the corner of the open doorway.

There was no chance to take it back now. The best you could do was damage control and dig in your heels. He might have seen your cloak, maybe, but as far as you knew, he had no way of knowing it was you. No _definitive_ way, anyway. He hadn’t seen your face, hadn’t seen any defining features. As far as you were aware, he’d only seen your cloak. You still had a chance. Especially if you cleaned your clothes fast enough and thoroughly enough there wasn’t a trace of blood or the Underground on them.

Heart pounding as you attempted to keep yourself calm so you could act _rationally_ and not tip your hand and give yourself away by panicking, you raced back to the surface to start disposing of evidence in the safety of your quarters.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Levi tried to be quick when he opened the door, intending to catch L/N in the middle of whatever was happening in here and then act accordingly. As far as he was aware, he’d acted fast enough and quietly enough he should have gotten the drop on her, even with that apparent sixth sense of hers that had allowed her to avoid him thus far. The door swung open, and he saw a blur of motion–a blur he tried to write off as simply his eyes still adjusting to the scene at first–and the flash of a dark cloak disappearing around the corner.

Levi’s eyes widened at the realization that blur or at least the cloak was L/N fleeing from the scene, a ‘Tch!’ escaping him as he dashed across the abandoned building to try and make it out the other side before she could disappear again, hand on the edge of the doorway as he slid out into the alley on the other side.

Nothing.

He rushed to the mouth, hoping that maybe she had just turned out of sight, that he wasn’t about to lose her again like he had the first time he’d followed her.

Again, nothing. Not even the sound of retreating footsteps. She was just…gone, like the first time.

“ _Shit_!”

Swearing loudly to himself, with the sound surprisingly disconcerting when it was thrown out into the silent streets, Levi turned back to the abandoned building, the only thing he had now that L/N had fled.

She _had_ fled, which meant that this time she might have left something behind for him to find in her haste to leave. People got sloppy when they were in a rush, and he was going to take full advantage of it.

Giving one last frustrated look down the deserted street, Levi doubled back to the abandoned building she had been inside, standing in the middle of the room as his eyes did a quick roam over his surroundings, looking for anything out of place, anything out of the ordinary.

Over in a dark corner, there was a mass, some kind of shape that looked distorted and unlike any kind of furniture or item found in an abandoned building like this. It wasn’t moving, but Levi still approached with caution, the dark shape slowly taking form as Levi approached, gradually becoming clearer as Levi silently came closer.

It was a body. The tail he’d been following, from the looks of it, though Levi still didn’t have a cause of death. The body was distorted and lying unnaturally, head bent at an odd angle–not broken, just left in an odd position–and it was lying face down, as if it had been dropped in a rush.

He had interrupted something. The question now was what had he interrupted. His gaze had already darkened with the realization she’d left a body behind, but whether this had been intentional or self-defense remained to be seen. The motive, her intentions, were largely going to affect how he reacted.

Levi turned the body over with his foot and froze, staring at the man’s throat. It was ripped out, like an animal had sunk its teeth all the way in but had been startled into tearing away before it was ready, bringing half the man’s throat with it. Yet, despite the gruesome sight, there were only a few drops of blood on the ground beneath the body, a couple light smears around the wound itself. When Levi crouched down to touch the body, it was ice cold against his fingers. Algor mortis shouldn’t have even started yet, the man had hardly been dead for a few moments, but there was next to no blood despite his manner of death, the body lacked all warmth–the warmth shouldn’t have drained from him for at least a half hour.

There should have been blood all over this place–should have still been some blood in _him_ draining to the parts of his body lying on the ground. And yet…

A memory was making its way unbidden to the front of his mind, whispering sinister, impossible, dark thoughts into his mind as Levi stared at the dead man’s throat. A memory of a legend Kenny once tried to scare him with, one he had dismissed as nonsense and scoffed at the impossible tale.

A tale about an immortal creature that plagued the Underground as long as there had _been_ an Underground, choosing the miserable place because of its darkness and isolation from the sun, and its plethora of people that no one would even care if someone went missing every now and then. An undead demon with glowing red eyes, the last thing a man saw before it feasted on his blood and drained the life out of him, leaving his empty body lying in the street with his throat ripped open.

Kenny had told it to him once to scare him, to keep him from getting too cocky and thinking he was untouchable. And Levi had called him out on it, called it the bullshit he’d been so sure that it was. There was no such thing as demons or bloodsucking monsters. There were real monsters in the world, but not of this dark, fantastical variety.

And Kenny had taught him the lesson that had led him here. And made him a bit more wary of the darker corners of the world.

_“Maybe not demons…or maybe there **are**. There’s Titans above ground, right? Why wouldn’t we have our own brand of monster down here?”_

_Kenny scratched his chin. “Whether you believe in the **demon** part or not, there’s always a little truth to every legend. At the least, there’s probably a killer somewhere down here with a signature like that who caused the stories.”_

_Levi looked dubiously at Kenny. “Yeah? How do I know they’re not just legends about **your** murders.”_

_“Because, Runt. I slit throats, I don’t **rip ‘em out**.”_

Levi felt his blood run cold, chilling him to the core.

What he’d witnessed…she had not been a _target_ , she had never been someone’s _prey_ ; she had been the _hunter_ luring in an unsuspecting victim.

How long had she been doing this? A couple years at least, going off how long she’d been sneaking out to the Underground, but it probably went on before that, before she joined the military, before she even showed up on the surface. When he’d caught the smell of blood on her cloak he hadn’t expected _this_ to be the source.

_“I…conduct blood rituals to achieve perfection.”_

That deadpan delivery at the table in the mess hall–had she been secretly mocking them? Or, more accurately, secretly mocking _him_ , the one trying to figure out what she was hiding?

Was she…even _human_?

It was insane, but so was the thought of the empty grave before he’d opened that coffin. It was madness, but it _fit,_ it made things that had seemed alien suddenly belong in this greater picture. Where else would all this blood have gone, especially with how quickly she had to leave because of his interruption? How else would she have these senses that told her when Levi was near–that allowed her to know when she was being followed when it should have been impossible, that allowed her to see him in detail in the shadows from a distance yet still draw a perfect portrait, and had made her aware of the Titans before anyone else? That strength and ease in all of her physical requirements as a soldier had to have come from somewhere, like Levi’s, but _this_ hadn’t been what he was thinking.

And then there was the undead thing, the immortal thing, from the story he’d heard as a child.

No, no that was pushing it too far. That she might not be human was a hard enough pill to swallow, even when he had his own superhuman abilities and lived in a world of Titans. He was not a superstitious person, and this was a hard thought to even entertain, let alone to take seriously. Even when he was staring at a corpse that strongly suggested the truth of the tale.

Even if it would explain how Y/N Frazier crawled out of her grave when it was supposed to be humanly impossible. Even though it smoothed away the question of how Y/N Frazier and Y/N L/N were connected by suggesting they were the same person.

No matter what the full truth was, he was at a point where he had to confront her either way, for everyone’s safety. He might be the only one who could match her, physically, and even then he’d have to be extra careful about his approach, because she could still overpower him if he wasn’t careful. At the very least, she was a murderer, a serial killer who hadn’t stopped even after joining the Scouts and was still _regularly_ killing, and somewhere he used to live, no less. He had hated living down here, but part of him still took that personally.

At the worst, though, she was a monster of shadowy legend. One that preyed on humankind, like the Titans. A true enemy of mankind that it seemed almost no one was aware of. Now he knew, and he had to do something about it.

But first, the confrontation. And he better make sure he had her cornered and that he was ready for a fight. It was likely she would lash out, and he needed to be prepared for a fight for survival. He needed to be ready to handle the situation as soon as he had the truth, because whether she was a murderer or monster only affected how the fight would go and the severity of the stakes. If she was a legitimate _monster_ as well as a murderer did not affect the fact that a fight was inevitable–it just decided how deadly it would actually be.

And he needed a contingency in case the worst happened, so the truth wouldn’t die with him.

The Scouts needed to know what lurked within their ranks. _Erwin_ needed to know. It was all a front–something deadly was masquerading as one of them, and it needed to be stopped before it could do irreversible damage.


	8. Bleed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, um…all I’m going to put for this chapter is, ah…this little quote from AOT’s Wiki about Levi:
> 
> “When dealing with individuals he perceives to be enemies to mankind, Levi is capable of behaving sadistically, even vindictively. “

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Levi waited a few days before he did anything.

He would have waited longer, but he knew if he waited a week or more, she would have the chance to kill again, and he wanted to act before she could. The other night it had been someone who had jumped her that she’d attacked, but who would it be next time? Some random civilian off the street? Considering the conditions in the Underground, the man she killed could have been someone just trying to survive–Levi himself had been a thug in the Underground.

Of course, given the area they’d been in, it was less likely that man had been _just trying to get by_ , but there were too many unknowns about her, too much sinister implications in the stark facts alone, for him to go off blind, naïve faith that she was some kind of vigilante type that only preyed on the truly terrible.

Though honestly, even that thought sickened him. If she was just another person, which was the theory he would act on considering how _insane_ the other one was, then that meant she was going out of her way to kill people in the Underground, and that kind of self-righteous dealing out of judgement and death was sickening to him.

Of course, he was still keeping the _insane_ theory in mind. He had no solid evidence he’d seen with his own eyes to prove it, just a bunch of theories and circumstances that fit so snug and perfectly into the larger picture he couldn’t ignore it. But he wasn’t going to treat her as some supernatural creature of darkness until he saw something that proved it without a doubt.

All the more reason for this plan for a confrontation he’d managed to cook up in a short amount of time.

Firstly, he hadn’t told Erwin yet. Not because he’d suddenly decided not to have the other man involved–no, Erwin _needed_ to know what was going on, no matter how this panned out. Why he withheld the developments he’d made in the Underground was because he was still uncertain about the more insane theory. There was too much for him to omit it, but he didn’t exactly want to go up to Erwin and tell him that he thought L/N was a demon who drank blood from humans she killed every week.

Erwin would probably have him committed if he told the man he was considering it with no actual, solid proof. So, Levi had left behind a letter addressed to Erwin explaining what he’d discovered in the Underground and his two theories, complete with the tale from the Underworld and why he was crazy enough to even consider it, and how at the very least she was a serial killer so either way she was a threat. That way, if something went wrong during this confrontation and he didn’t make it out of there alive, the secret wouldn’t die with him, and Erwin would still be warned.

That was his main concern.

The second had been how to approach this. How to get the upper hand on her when she was already so…refined in her senses. How she always seemed to know when he was nearby or when he was heading her way. How was he supposed to get the drop on someone like _that_?

That was where Eld came into play.

He did his best to make it look unimportant and nothing more than part of the usual daily routine. The command was given in passing as Eld came from the opposite end of the hallway, Levi stopping him briefly to ask him to tell L/N to make a delivery for Levi to a specific address, with instructions that included a fake package waiting just outside Levi’s office for L/N to pick up and deliver.

The address, unbeknownst to Eld and certainly to L/N who had just recently come to the surface compared to Levi, was to an abandoned warehouse a little ways outside of one of Rose’s main towns.

After giving the order to Eld, Levi kept walking with a purpose like it had simply been a passing thing instead of the first domino to fall in his plan for cornering L/N–or at least getting the drop on her to give himself a bit of an upper hand in this mess.

Now he just had to get to his observation point before she had the chance to make the delivery, and wait.

No more games. It was time he started getting real answers from the source itself.

* * *

Levi left his jacket behind, making sure he had full mobility, ODM gear primed and ready as he crouched low on the rooftop of another tall building a few houses over from the warehouse. He waited in silence, sharp gaze on the roads as he waited for L/N to appear with the fake delivery.

He tried not to think too much about the situation any more than he already had. He was already so wrapped up in conspiracy theories as it was he didn’t want to get any further in his head, especially since he needed to be focused on the confrontation at hand.

Leaning against the chimney of the home he was waiting on top of, Levi attached one of the ODM gear blades, just in case he needed it as soon as his feet hit the ground. When he needed to move, the only sound he wanted to make was the ODM gear, and hopefully he could push it fast enough L/N wouldn’t be able to bolt.

Speaking of…

She finally appeared, making her way down the street towards the warehouse with the fake parcel in hand. She slowed down when she saw the state of the building, hesitation appearing in her movements, head suddenly on a swivel. She was good at sensing the danger in a situation, which under normal circumstances would be a good thing, but currently it made Levi’s job a little harder.

Levi shifted just enough so he was ready to move immediately, watching L/N as she cautiously made her way into the warehouse. Heart pounding, Levi waited a few seconds, giving her the chance to walk deeper into the warehouse, to put down to parcel where he’d described…

The cables of his gear fired, and he kicked off the roof, a burst of gas propelling him forward, feet extended out and arms crossed in front of his face to protect himself as he crashed through one of the warehouse windows. Below him, she whipped around at the sound of the glass crashing, body coiling like she was going to run, retaliate, or simply dodge. After seeing it was _Levi_ crashing through the window, she hesitated for the briefest moment. It was all he needed for him to move just slightly, to adjust now that he had a visual of her, so that he could land atop her.

His knee was planted into her chest, foot planting on the ground beside her solidly, one hand slapping against the ground beside her head while his other put his blade at her throat. With her pinned solidly beneath him, Levi’s eyes flashed, glass crunching beneath his boot from the shattered window as he made sure he was in a solid position that would not be easy for her to break free of.

“What are you?” Levi ground out, steely gaze fixated on her eyes, reading every twitch in her face to make sure he caught if she tried to lie to him.

It was the first thing he asked, because he knew she was a serial killer, at least, but if she was more, if those monsters from the story were real and she was one of them…

She hesitated. It wasn’t confusion that flashed across her face at his question, and she didn’t immediately spout some bullshit lie about being innocent of anything that would justify his ambush.

The fact that she didn’t immediately ask him what he was talking about gave him a bad feeling, a sense of his monster theory slowly solidifying.

He still wasn’t ready to believe it entirely, but it was continuing to gain traction.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she said in a level voice. Beneath him, she kept perfectly still, attempting to look non-threatening. it didn’t work when Levi knew she’d killed a man just a few days ago by ripping out his throat.

Levi’s grip tightened, the blade held straight against her throat as his eyes flashed dangerously. “I’m done playing games with you. I know you’ve been sneaking around the Underground killing people for years, longer, perhaps." Even though he wasn’t entirely certain, he decided to take a leaf out of Erwin’s book and gamble to see if he could coax a confirming reaction, growling the words out in anger. "You’re not even _human_ , are you?”

Alarm flashed in her eyes, and her posture shifted to a more on-guard position, body tense beneath him as her words came out careful and measured, full of wariness. “What do you–”

“ _Enough with the games_!”

He was pissed now, fed up with the round and round with her constantly slipping through his grasp. Her attempt to continue to be dodgy right now only inflamed his temper, causing his free hand to grab her collar and lift her up before slamming her against the ground again. Glass cracked and crunched beneath her from the impact, likely causing the glass to tear up her back in the process.

She didn’t react in pain, though. Her eyes hardened and she grabbed at the hand that was clutching her collar, attempting to pry his fingers away as she ignored what he was saying in favor of trying to get his hand off her neck. She wasn’t even going after the blade, which would have made far more sense in his mind, but both her hands were going for the one at her collar.

She was protecting something there.

_“She’s always wearing the same necklace, all the time–I’ve never seen her without it.”_

That had to be what she was protecting, what she was so focused on right now. Realizing it might be something he could use as leverage, his hand delved a little further until he felt a chain and medallion, fingers curling around it before he ripped it off her on an instinct, holding his hand far out of her reach while the other hand kept that blade on her neck.

Since Levi had come through the window and pinned her to the ground instantly, they were sitting in the sunlight. The shadows of the warehouse were a few feet away from her, and Levi’s body was partially blocking out the sun.

As soon as the necklace came off of her, as Levi pulled his hand back to hold it out of reach, the parts of her that were exposed to the sun and not hidden in shade or shadow began to steam and burn. In a sudden show of strength that revealed just how much she had been holding back, she let out a scream of pain and darted off into the shadows, momentarily abandoning the attempt to protect or reclaim the necklace in favor of getting out of the sun and curling up in the shadows a few feet away.

Levi sat frozen in place, staring in shock at the woman whose skin had turned red and blistered, the steam already starting to lessen and the skin that had been burned starting to heal itself as he watched.

_What…the fuck…_

That…had not been normal. Nothing about this situation, about the woman in front of him, was normal. No more doubts, then. The insane was the reality of what he’d discovered. She really was the creature from the Underground tales. A creature of shadows that fed off the blood of humans.

“It’s real, then,” he said in a monotone voice, getting to his feet as she continued to lurk in the shadows, the pain from her burns lessening enough she was unfurling from the defensive, pained position of a few moments ago and was slowly getting to her feet as well.

The tension in the air, the dynamic between them, shifted entirely with this new development. There was open hostility in Levi’s gaze as he tucked the necklace safely away. As long as he had it, he had an advantage over her–he didn’t understand the specifics, but it seemed the necklace he had protected her somehow from the sun. As long as he had it instead of her, she was trapped and restricted to the shadows of this warehouse. He would have an environmental advantage. Though she would also probably be desperate to get it back. He would have to be careful of that–desperation made people unpredictable and dangerous, and she was already both of those on a normal day. At least she was to _him_.

Now that the impossible had been confirmed, many of the theories Levi had been keeping at bay in case it really was impossible now came flooding in, hardening his resolve and deepening the hostility the longer he thought about it. She might not have done anything to harm the Scouts yet, but that didn’t mean she was innocent. She hadn’t been around Erwin yet, had she? What if Erwin was her target? Now that everything was rapidly falling into place, the enormity of the implications that came with her being an _immortal_ creature was falling over him as well. At the rate she’d been feeding on people in the Underground recently, she must have killed hundreds of people across her lifetime–more, maybe.

And that locked door double homicide–the way Victoria had died, how it had only been Victoria and Y/N Frazier in the room, how there had been no sounds to alert the parents, how strongly the police had suspected it had been someone the girls knew. Now that he knew what L/N was, it made sense for Victoria’s murderer to have been L/N herself. The woman in front of him hadn’t been above killing her best friend back then, so even if that man she’d killed last night had been scum of the earth, anyone was fair game to her. Who knew who else she had hurt or killed during her lifetime? She was just as much of a threat as the Titans, except her, he didn’t know her intentions. Titans were mindless beasts that ate humans just because. She had intelligence, she mingled with them, she picked them out, stalked, and preyed upon them, and her intentions with the Scouts were entirely unknown to him.

Which made her much more dangerous, in his mind.

He would deal with his reaction to finding out these monsters of the shadows were real later. Right now, he had to deal with the situation at hand and the creature that was staring him down from the shadows now. Reflection could come later, if he survived this, considering how in the dark he was about what they were capable of and what they could do. Or how to kill them, now that he thought about it considering he’d just watched those burns across her skin rapidly heal.

Decapitation seemed like a safe first attempt, if it came to that. He needed answers, first, though. He might actually be able to get some answers now that the façade had been dropped. There was no point in her trying to hide it now that he knew for a fact that she wasn’t human.

“Why join the Scouts? What did you hope to gain–what were you trying to do? Were we just your convenient cover or does it go deeper than that?”

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

Wariness had quickly turned to alarm as you had approached the warehouse and as Levi jumped you. You’d heard his approach, but seeing it was Levi crashing through the window had caused your hesitation–the last thing you wanted was to do something that suggested you were threatening him.

Alarm, however, had given way to panic one Levi pulled the necklace from your neck. That necklace was your freedom. Your life. And he had quite literally just taken it from you and was now actively keeping it from you. Without that necklace, you couldn’t walk in the sun, couldn’t be in the Scouts, couldn’t stay on the surface–you would have to crawl back down into the Underground for the rest of your life because as far as you knew, that necklace was the only one of its kind. You’d acquired it by a nigh miracle, off the body of another vampire. Finding another would be no small feat–practically impossible.

All other thought went out the window, except for the singular consuming thought to get the necklace _back_. _Now_. Levi’s questions were secondary in the wake of the need to get your necklace back.

“Give it back,” you said in a harsh tone, gaze boring into Levi as any calm or timid demeanor gave way to a hidden ferocity from your nature.

“No,” Levi replied simply, taking a step back deeper into the sunlight. “You’ll answer my questions first.”

In an attempt to take it back by force, you rushed at him, not sure which pocket it was in, but knowing if you moved fast enough you could at least knock him out of the light and have a better chance at finding it in the shadow. Levi side-stepped after seeing you coil for an attack, moving out of the way just in time. You crashed into the shadow with a gasp, skin blistering again from the brief exposure to the sun. You would just have to tolerate the brief pain–it was nothing compared to getting that necklace back.

After taking a moment to let the burn ease, you shifted and rushed at him again, this time successfully knocking him into the shadows before he staggered backwards into the light of another window, blade in front of him in an attempt to ward you off and warn you he /would/ cut you if he felt he needed to.

“Give it back, _now_ ,” you reiterated in a growl, and Levi’s gaze hardened again, angling the blade in front of him so the sunlight glinted at you, causing you to have to duck out of the way with a hiss.

“While I have it, you can’t be in the sun–you can’t leave this warehouse. Correct? I’ll keep it until I have my answers,” Levi answered, continuing to reflect the sunlight off his blade to force you to move.

Not in the mood to be toyed with–and the irony currently escaping you considering Levi had alluded to the fact he’d felt like you’d been toying with him all this time–you rushed him again. This time, he grabbed at you when you connected with him, both of you falling to the floor and rolling across the ground, your hands grappling at his waist to try and find the necklace. Since your hands were currently occupied, it was easy for him to grab you and roll you over, attempting to pin you to the floor face first with part of your body in the sun.

“Answers, now!” Levi shouted over your cry of pain, body weight pressing down on you to try and keep you down and in the sun. “Why join the Scouts? What do you get out of it?” Levi demanded to know.

Considering how much he wanted answers, you doubted he’d be doing this if he knew that being in the sun too long would kill you. He just knew it hurt you, which was probably why he was trying to use it to _make_ you talk.

With an angry and pained snarl, you briefly went still before rearing back to throw him off, turning in the same movement to push him off of you and break free.

This was quickly turning into a full on fight. So much for not antagonizing him.

As Levi got back to his feet, the edge of the blade was angled more fully towards you. It seemed he could tell this was becoming a full on fight as well, and was about to step it up.

You weren’t armed, not in the sense of weapons that weren’t body parts. Your fangs weren’t an option–both because you refused to bite him, and even if you wanted to, you _couldn’t_ , thanks to what you’d been putting in his tea…

Which meant while he had his own natural abilities and his blade, you just had your strength and speed, plus you were holding back because the _last_ thing you wanted was to kill him, which made this all the more complicated.

Once again, you rushed him, and like last time, he met your attack instead of stepping away, trying to throw you aside into the sun. You dug your heels in to prevent it, feeling Levi’s fist connect with your gut and causing you to stagger slightly, fingers clenching in the fabric of his shirt as you threw him aside. He didn’t go far, planting his feet after a few staggered steps before his foot cut through the air, colliding with your jaw. You reeled back, hand on your bloodied lip before you felt his hands on you again, taking advantage of your momentary daze as he swept one of your feet out from underneath you, pushing you backwards and to the ground again. His blade was at your throat once more, except this time it was biting, just shy of drawing blood as he held you firmly down with all his strength, all patience and tolerance gone from his eyes.

“Answer me, or I’ll just kill you and be done with it,” he threatened, the chill in his eyes and the blade breaking skin and drawing blood from your throat for emphasis and to show how serious he was. For him, it was your last chance to talk. And for extra incentive, he was attempting to keep your arm pinned and burning in the sun.

Your instinct for self-preservation triggered at the very direct and real threat against your life, you threw him off of you with all of your strength, tossing him aside and hearing him go through a wall before landing with an ominous sound out of view.

You heard a choked sound…silence fell over the room…and you could smell the blood in the air.

_No…_

The scent of blood was getting rapidly stronger and overpowering.

_No, no, no…_

You’d only been trying to get him off you, wanting the threat to your life removed before you were going to pin him and make him listen while you took back your necklace.

You hadn’t meant to hurt him–not as seriously as the scent of blood in the air suggested. And now you were afraid of what you were going to find as you got up from the floor with your heart in your throat and arm cradled to your chest, waiting for it to heal as you rushed forward to see what state he was in and assess the situation.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

The first impact as he was sent flying through the wall had been enough to stun him and knock the wind out of him, trying to brace himself for the next impact when he felt the wall give beneath him, choking on the dust he inhaled before he felt the second impact on a second wall that had been perpendicular to the first and already partially broken and decrepit. It gave way partially but not entirely, wood and other building materials cracking and giving way beneath him, Levi’s full weight smashing against the broken materials. Oddly enough, he didn’t fall to the ground. His head cracked against stone, pain shooting against his head and momentarily disoriented and unable to grasp his surroundings as something held him in place.

He choked again, partially on the dust from the broken walls, but also from pain–not just from his head, but from something that made it hard to breathe, that had him starting to go into shock. As his vision slowly came back, sunlight falling across his body in beams from a boarded up window, he looked down to see some of the wooden internal, structural boards of the broken second wall sticking through his stomach.

He’d been impaled. Plus the back of his head felt damp, telling him he’d cracked his head _hard_ on the stone behind him as well as been impaled somewhere fatal. Impaled in a place that would give him a slow death, too. Of all the ways to die, it was going to be impaled on a random piece of wood in a broken down building. Not fighting Titans or anything like that. All that time _fighting Titans_ , putting himself out there and putting his life on the line time and time again, all those people dying around him in fights with man eating giants, and _this_ was how he was going to go out?

What a joke.

Well…perhaps there was something fitting in his death in the fact it had been in the middle of a struggle with another man-eating creature. Either way, he was still going to die. She would either watch him die or leave him to die, because it was the best situation for her–he would be silenced, her secret would remain. Well, as far as she knew. She didn’t know there would be a letter for Erwin to find in his office revealing her secret to the Scout’s Commander. He had some comfort in that thought, at least.

He’d known this was a possibility going into this situation with so many unknowns, but he’d still hoped that maybe he could make it through this alive. Apparently his luck had finally run out.

As Levi came to terms with his rapidly approaching death, L/N suddenly climbed through the hole in the first wall, her burnt arm cradled to her chest even as it rapidly healed, eyes wide at the sight of Levi impaled in front of her. Her hands shook slightly as she approached him, her unburned hand reaching out instinctively for him before it was burned by the sunlight, as if reminding her that she didn’t have her necklace and couldn’t withstand the sunlight.

She let out a small hiss, stepping as close as she could with the sunlight as her hands started searching him again, patting him down in a rush, obviously looking for the necklace he’d stashed away.

“ _ **FUCK**_!” she shouted halfway through, making Levi flinch slightly at the outburst, her hands repeatedly being burned and forcing her to pull away before she would reach out again, uncaring if she would get burned, simply desperate to find that damn necklace.

In his mind, it showed how little she cared for his life, how inconsequential it was to her in the grand scheme of things. How she could ignore the dying man in front of her so completely in her search for that damn necklace.

He wouldn’t get any answers from her before he died, would he?

Her hand finally found the place he’d tucked her necklace away, a modicum of relief flashing in her eyes as her fingers curled around the fine chain and she pulled back, stepping away from the sunlight as she quickly put it back on. Her head lifted, eyes meeting his, and Levi felt a sudden surge of panic as he realized there was a red glow in her eyes, a red glow that was getting stronger as she stepped closer to him.

His mind was filled with that tale Kenny had told him, how the glowing red eyes was the last thing a man saw before having his throat ripped out and being devoured by the monster of shadows. On a self-preservation instinct, Levi’s limp grip tightened on the blade still on his hand through pure survival instinct drilled into him after years in the field. As she came closer, he attacked with the blade, slashing at her to try and keep her back before she could tear into him. He was dying, but at least let him have some control over how he died–he would rather die from something stupid like being impaled like this than ripped into by her while he lay helpless and unable to do anything. He might be dying, but he would fight until his fingers couldn’t grip the blade anymore to keep her at bay if it meant dying with a scrap of dignity.

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

When you saw Levi, the panic was palpable in your blood, causing your pulse to quicken and your hands to shake as you went up to him. Where he was pinned down, he was in the sunlight, which meant you couldn’t _help_ him like you needed to until you had your necklace back. You hated prioritizing it over his life, even for a few moments, but you needed the necklace back so you wouldn’t be restricted by sunlight while you tried to help him.

Every moment you’d been unable to find it had been torture. Yes, because you kept burning yourself in the sunlight as you tried to find it on his person, but also because you could practically feel his time running out with every second that passed with you unable to find the necklace.

And then there was the big issue. The temptation. You had always been afraid of what would happen if Levi’s blood was ever spilled around you. Just being around him and what you knew about him was enough to tell you his blood would be exceptional, one of the best sources of blood within the walls you were going to find. Freshly spilled blood was always tough to resist, but when it was exceptional blood like his, and when _this much of it_ was being spilled so close to you, the red blossoming rapidly across his white shirt…

You had to fight yourself every moment you were standing in front of him, that intoxicating scent trying to overwhelm all of your senses, dizzying in its intoxicating nature, drawing you in at a time when you couldn’t afford to take a step back. You knew your eyes were glowing red as your vampiric nature tried to take full control, your teeth aching painfully in your mouth, fangs wanting to protrude forth and begging you to sink your teeth into his warm skin.

But you couldn’t. You _couldn’t_.

He needed _help_ , the kind of help only _you_ could give him right now, and if you didn’t do it _soon_ it was going to be too late.

Trying to overcome your instincts by sheer willpower started to feel impossible the longer you stood just in front of him, teeth grit painfully together especially with how much your jaw was aching right now. It helped to remind yourself in your head over and over like some kind of hypnotic mantra that he had white sage in his blood and it would be poisonous for you to even have a small sip–even if you did give in, it wouldn’t end well, not just for him but for you, too.

Finally finding the necklace had been a relief–no more wasting time, you could help him without restriction now. Plus it was a huge wave of relief to have the small item that provided you with freedom, though any relief you felt was quickly muffled by the situation you and Levi were now in. Able to finally stop focusing on that necklace once more, you looked up at him just to make sure he was still conscious, that he was still with you and wasn’t _too_ pale, considering he hadn’t said a word the entire time you’d searched him. He might have still been in shock–

The sudden whistle of his blade slicing through the air and across your chest quickly dispelled any foolish notion you had about him being in shock. The rapid pounding of his heartbeat was enough to tell you the action had come from raw fear, and that fear was still rampant inside him even as he slowly bled out in front of you, his gaze still hard as steel despite his fear and the situation he was in.

The wound across your chest caused you to stagger back with a low groan, blood blossoming across your now ripped shirt even as the wound started to slowly stitch itself back together. The severity of the wound meant that the healing sapped at your strength, making you feel a hint of fatigue while also intensifying the thirst that was already so hard for you to control with so much top tier blood in such close proximity.

His breathing was ragged, but he still held that blade up to protect himself, showing he was ready to struggle against you until all strength left him. You couldn’t afford that right now–you needed cooperation if you were going to get him out of this. Or you at least needed him in a position he couldn’t fight back, though you weren’t about to wait until he lost his strength due to blood loss–it might be too late by then.

Using your speed to attempt to grab him before he could react, you snatched his hand that was holding that blade aloft with both of your hands, pausing for just a moment to meet his gaze.

“Sorry, but I can’t have you cutting me up right now and making this more difficult…it’ll heal anyway,” you said apologetically, seconds before you broke his hand without warning, a sound finally escaping him in the form of a sharp shout of pain that he quickly cut off, gritting his teeth even as the injury forced him to drop the blade and prevented him from drawing another–at least with that hand.

Now that you’d taken care of any attempts to try and attack her with the ODM gear blades, you lifted one of your arms up to your mouth, biting deeply into your own skin with a pained whimper. This wasn’t something you’d done before, especially not like this, but you knew it would work, so you muscled past the instinct not to hurt yourself and through the pain, making sure you drew enough blood it dribbled down your arm before you released it.

Levi was watching you in horrified silence, probably trying to figure out what the hell you were doing. It was clear he, ah…didn’t think very highly of you, but you were trying desperately not to take it personally and focus on your current task–making sure Humanity’s Strongest didn’t die from a stupid accident during a fight that had been born from a complete lack of understanding and communication.

“I know it’s gross, I know it’s weird, but you’ve got to drink it,” you told him as you moved closer, lifting your arm to his mouth. He gave you an incredulous look and a quick _no_ before you had pressed your arm against his mouth, and he tried to push your arm away with his one good hand, body tensing as he started to struggle, causing his wound to bleed more, fresh blood staining his shirt around the wound. You hadn’t moved him off of what was impaling him yet because you knew it would only make him bleed out faster, but if he was going to keep struggling like this, he was only going to do more damage.

Attempting to get him to stop moving, you pressed your other arm against his upper chest, that injury still pressed hard against his mouth even as he clenched his teeth and tried to keep his lips pressed together, tried to turn his head away and resist.

“Stop fighting me–it’s just going to make things worse, and we’re already on borrowed time,” you pleaded with him. He didn’t listen, though. It was no use–he saw you as an enemy, he didn’t trust you, why would he believe what you were doing was to help him?

You’d pushed your arm past his lips and up against his teeth–the only reason he didn’t bite was probably because he knew that would only accelerate or help what she was trying to do. All he could do was try to resist, try not to swallow any. The wound on your arm was healing, the bleeding slowing down as blood slipped down his chin, his resistance making a mess even as he coughed, choked on his own blood that was starting to well up in his throat, and attempted to spit out what had made it into his mouth, speckles of blood dotting your skin and his lips.

You hated how cruel it was, but he wasn’t giving you much of a choice. Desperate to get your blood in his system so it could heal him, and a fair amount of it so he would heal _quickly_ , you pulled your arm away, covered his mouth, bit into that same spot again hard enough tears pricked in your eyes, and then forced your arm against his mouth again, this time taking care to cover his airways and suffocate him until his reflex to swallow kicked in.

You held him down as best as you could as he struggled violently against you, unable to look him in the eye in the process and simply pressing your body weight against his to keep him pinned in place and try to minimize the damage his struggling would do to the already fatal wound, ears straining for the sound you were waiting for that would tell you he’d finally swallowed.

It was a relief when it finally happened, two big but reluctant gulps causing relief to wash through you as you instantly pulled back, Levi sucking in instinctually desperate gasps for air as you started undoing the brown wrap of your uniform that was around your waist, reaching over and pulling Levi’s free of his uniform as he sputtered and retched.

At the sound, you suddenly snapped to attention and reached up to grasp his chin, eyes flashing dangerously. “Don’t you dare try to spit it back up you stubborn, idiotic _asshole_!” you snapped, some of your frustrations leaking out despite your best efforts to try and stay calm in this situation. “I’m trying to save your _life_ you _goddamn_ idiot!”

Pulling the wrap on his uniform free as well, you quickly wadded both of them up, finally slipping one hand behind him against the middle of his back, the other resting on his chest, bracing yourself as if this was going to hurt you as much as it was going to hurt him. You reminded yourself to breathe through your mouth instead of your nose in the hopes that would help lessen the bloodthrist when the blood gushed out with what you were about to do.

 _Fuck, this is not how I wanted this to happen, if it was ever going to happen_ , you thought to yourself before–again, without warning Levi–you pulled him quickly off of the wood that had impaled him.

Levi’s cry of pain was far more audible this time, his legs buckling and causing you to have to support his weight as your hands shifted, pressing the wadded up wraps to the entrance and exit wounds of where he’d been impaled to try and staunch the bleeding and try to keep as much blood as you could _in_ his body as long as possible. You didn’t know how long it would take your blood to start healing him, or if it would heal him in time, but you _did_ know from personal experience that the healing wouldn’t work properly if he was still impaled.

You hoped for his sake the healing would outpace the rate he was dying, even with all the time you’d lost with all his stubborn struggling.

“Careful, careful, try not to move, you’ll only bleed out faster,” you warned him as you very carefully laid him down, letting the weight of his body press the wrap against his back against that wound while you pressed down with your strength to staunch the bleeding from his stomach, your now free hand making sure you laid him down as gently as possible, crackling his head until he was lying still on the ground.

You swallowed thickly at the increased scent of blood in the air, small groans trapped in your throat, eyes closed and nostrils flared as you tried desperately to resist the urge to drink from him. There was a dark voice in the back of your mind that whispered what a waste all this blood would be if he died, but you shoved it aside viciously, pressing perhaps a little tighter than necessary against the wrap you were holding to his stomach.

After a few moments of tense silence, you heard Levi’s voice rasp out a question, his broken hand lying limp against the floor and the other instinctively clutching at the wrap with you.

“Why? Why not leave me for dead, when I know what you are? Your secret would die with me–so why are you trying to help me?” he asked, voice hoarse and strained, his eyes burning with confusion, showing just how lost he was at how quickly this whole encounter kept shifting in direction and tone. And looking into his eyes, you felt a sudden wave of sympathy and pity for him.

He was just as lost and confused as you had been all those years ago, when this had first happened to you. You couldn’t hold any of this against him. He’d clearly thought you were a threat–understandably, since you technically were. Even now while you were trying to help him, you were fighting tooth and nail against your nature to rip into him instead.

He needed answers. He deserved answers. The truth, no more lies or deceit.

You were going to give him what you never had the luxury of receiving. An explanation.

“Humanity can’t afford to lose you,” you said, the words coming out far more gruff than you anticipated, how much you were struggling right now leaking out into your voice, your body rigid with the effort it took to resist the blood seeping out of him just below your hands–blood that was actually starting to stain your hands, you could see now. “And I don’t want you dead. I never have and I never will. You need to live, even if that means I have to run, because the Scouts need you.”

You cleared your throat, deciding to add a bit more logic that might sit more comfortably with him considering he’d gone into this seeing you as an enemy.

“Not to mention, I’m not an idiot. It won’t be hard to figure out I’m responsible if you die here, like this. There’s that, too,” you added in a fairly flippant voice that hinted at humor, like you were actually trying to lighten the mood. The attempt fell flat, though–you hadn’t expected it to stick, at least, it had been a knee jerk reaction.

His breathing was shallow, but he still attempted to speak again, trying to get the most important questions out first while he still had time.

“Why…did you join the Scouts?” he asked, voice low and quiet from a lack of energy, the sound alarming you because it made you realize just how much blood he’d lost, how weak he already was. Still, you answered him, hoping to keep him engaged and awake by answering his questions. You needed him awake, because that meant he was still with you, he still had a chance to make it out of here alive.

You cleared your throat, trying not to get emotional over the question that actually had quite a personal reason behind it. You’d only given him a partial truth that night he’d asked you in the mess hall after you’d returned from the Underground. Now, with him knowing you weren’t human and having something of an understanding of what you were, you could give him a more complete picture.

“I couldn’t take living the way I was down there. Killing to survive and nothing more, doing _nothing_ with my life except surviving–if it could even be called that. And it was coming at such a high cost just to keep myself physically alive, a high cost in the lives of others, and I…I wanted to do something that made my life feel…worthwhile. I don’t think it could ever justify all those deaths, but at least I could do something to help a cause bigger than myself. I could put these abilities of mine to use for something other than killing people to survive.” You met his eyes, your panic rising to see the fogginess in his gaze, how unfocused he was, how much he was struggling simply to stay present and hear your answer. You spoke a little louder to make sure it got through to him, pouring your emotions and intent into your next words in the hopes he would hear you and believe the sincerity of what you said. “I really did join to help in whatever way I could. I wanted to give my life some meaning again, so that maybe I could feel like I had a reason for living, for being what I am.”

Levi’s breaths started to hitch and catch, eyes fluttering, head starting to loll to the side, consciousness clearly starting to leave him. In a panic, you reached out with your free hand to grab at his chin, trying to turn his head back to its upright position to look at you.

“Captain? Captain Levi? Levi, stay with me, I need you to stay awake.” His eyes focused on you for a moment, but only briefly. His eyes never regained that conscious clarity, remaining foggy and unfocused as his eyes started to flutter again.

“ _Captain_!” you shouted harshly at him, smacking him across the face in hopes to spark something of a physical reaction. “Hey, stay with me–you can’t let yourself die, especially not right now,” you lectured him as his head briefly lolled towards you after you’d smacked him. He was already slipping again, though, and you continued to shout at him to try and keep him with you, desperation coloring your voice.

“ _Levi_! You _have_ to stay alive, especially now that you’ve got my blood in your system. Please, stay awake, just a little longer! I need you to stay with me until my blood heals enough of your wound, okay? _Captain Levi_ , stay awake, stay– _Levi_!”

You could see him struggling, see him trying to stay awake and alert, trying to stay with you, but he went limp, his consciousness leaving him soon after, breath a bare rattle and his pulse alarmingly weak.

“ _Captain Levi_!”


	9. Thorns on the Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me forever to come up with this title lol And I can’t begin to explain how much I adored all the feedback...and how tempted I was just to let you all squirm for a few days just for the heck of it XD
> 
> ik, ik, I’m evil, what’s new (She says, sipping from the mug that says Tears of My Readers. No really, I own a mug that says that. It’s my favorite).
> 
> I swear the delay isn’t because I wanted to make you squirm, though, I really had some troubles near the end and had to work through them PLUS decide to chop off my initial plans for half this chapter and shove them into the next chapter because this one was already so damn long XD

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

When Levi came to, he felt lethargic and disoriented. His head was pounding, limbs heavy, and he even found breathing to be tiresome and difficult. Something that would have normally been alarming, if he could think straight.

What day was it? Was it night or day? Where was he? Why did he feel like there was somewhere he needed to be, something he needed to do?

He attempted to move his arms to start to sit up, opening his eyes briefly before immediately closing them as the world spun around him, the bright light painful on his eyes. A groan rumbled in his chest but didn’t make it past his lips as he slowly started to sit up, using the soft surface below him as a sense of stability and direction while the world was spinning around him. As he sat up, something sheer and soft slid off his bare skin, scratching against something that was covering his lower torso.

Levi opened his eyes more cautiously this time, squinting against the light that came in through the window as his vision slowly came into focus on the familiar room around him.

His room. His bedroom.

What the hell was he doing in bed? He never slept in his own bed–it was there for decoration more than anything else. If he’d fallen asleep it would have been in just own chair.

And why was everything in his head such a confused mess? He shouldn’t be this disoriented right now, why couldn’t he remember…remember…

Levi lifted a heavy hand to his head, fingers digging into his hair as he tried to remember how he got here, what had happened before he’d fallen asleep?

Wait, there were…bandages on his head? Had he been knocked out by something? Some freak accident?

Right, he hadn’t fallen asleep…he’d fallen unconscious because…

Levi looked down, finally noticing the bandages wrapped around his middle as well, covering his abdomen with a few strips wrapped over his shoulder to keep them in place. His hand lowered carefully to his middle, hand pressing tenderly for a wound, for some reason expecting to see blood gushing everywhere or to at least start seeping through the bandages.

The skin underneath was tender, sensitive to the touch and admittedly painful now that he was aware of it, like one large bruise or burn. Except, he knew that wasn’t what was underneath the wrapping.

He remembered…blood. Lots of it, seeping out of a hole in his stomach, a hole ripped through him by the broken debris of a warehouse. He’d been losing blood so fast, staining his shirt, his skin, his hands, the floor…he’d known the moment he realized he’d been impaled he was going to die.

So why wasn’t he dead?

Why had he gone to the warehouse in the first place?

The door to his room–the office portion–opened without anyone knocking, and Levi looked up in surprise. Considering the lack of an inquiry, he assumed it was Erwin coming inside. They cut right through his office without hesitation, heading right towards his bedroom door to reveal–

His stomach lurched, panic started to try and rear its head from his chest.

Red eyes, burning skin, a necklace, arms that threw him through walls and into the wood that impaled and should have killed him, an arm pressed against his lips, forcing blood into his mouth and holding fast to keep him from spitting it out though he still tried, in vain, to do just that, hands over his mouth and nose, cutting off his air until his body grew so desperate for oxygen it swallowed the blood in his mouth on a reflex.

Hands pressed against his fatal wound to try and stop the bleeding, arms that pulled him free from the wood he’d been impaled upon, a voice that tried desperately to keep him awake even when he lacked the strength to stay conscious any longer.

Even with some of the answers she was still a damn enigma.

L/N walked through his bedroom door as if it was perfectly normal for her to be here, a tray with teacups and freshly brewed tea on one hand while the other was opening and closing doors. She was completely unharmed–no burned skin, no line on her neck where his blade had drawn blood, no fucking gash across his chest where he’d cut her open trying to get her to stay away from him. Her eyes were back to their normal color, not a hint of red in them or on the clothes she’d clearly changed.

How long had he been unconscious?

No, that was a secondary question, he had more important things to worry about right now. Like how casually she’d just walked into his room, the fact that she was _in his room_ , when he _knew_ what she was.

The sheets that had covered him were thrown aside as she entered the room, the world tipping dangerously as he tried to swing his feet out of bed and get to his feet, tried to get to a position he could fight back. L/N moved in a blur, not even trying to hide her nature anymore as she sat the tray of tea down on the closest surface and practically appeared in front of him.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed, yet, you’re still not–”

Ignoring what she was saying, Levi reached out and grabbed a fistful of the front of her shirt. With far more effort than he would ever admit, he pushed her backwards, his own steps staggering and unsteady as he followed her, pushing her up against the wall, eyes glaring murderously at her and effectively silencing whatever else she was about to say.

They stood there for several moments, Levi’s heavy breathing filling the room, L/N’s hands up at her sides with palms out, meeting his gaze and appearing infuriatingly unsurprised by his reaction.

He wanted to just kill her here and now. Fuck, he shouldn’t have hesitated back in that warehouse, things wouldn’t have ended in his…

He wasn’t dead. He was certain he wasn’t dead. He hadn’t _died_ …had he? He should have. He’d been at the brink of dying the last he remembered. She’d been yelling at him not to die because her blood…her blood needed more time to heal him.

Levi’s grip on her shirt tightened, fabric straining and threatening to rip.

He should have fucking killed her when it was simply man verses monster, because now she’d saved his life, and he didn’t know what to do.

He had to accept that this situation was a lot more…complicated then he’d originally thought, and that he didn’t understand what was happening. And if he didn’t understand the situation, he couldn’t approach it properly.

“I don’t trust you,” he growled out in a low voice. Again, she was unsurprised. It was probably one of the only stable facts between them right now.

“But…” his fingers flexed, adjusting the grip he had on her. “I will listen _one time_ , and this time you’ll _answer_ our questions.”

“Our?”

“Erwin will be there. Whatever I know, he’ll know, and I don’t want to be repeating shit." Levi centered his gaze on her again, expression dark and hard. ” _One time_ , and then we’ll decide what to do with you.“

Levi waited until she gave a slow nod to show she understood before he released her, hearing a little slide against the wall that told him he’d lifted her slightly–he hadn’t even been aware. Turning away, Levi attempted to get back to the bed before his strength left him, but his knees buckled and he started to collapse before he even made it halfway there.

L/N caught him before he could hit the floor.

"Your interrogation will have to wait. You still haven’t recovered enough to really get out of bed,” she told him, helping him get to the bed before he pushed her off to let him do the rest by himself.

She backed off and let him struggle to get back into the bed, going back over to the tray of tea she’d brought in the first place to start pouring the cups as she spoke. “You’ve been out for a couple days. People have been asking questions, which I haven’t answered. I’ve just been saying it’s your business and leaving it at that. You can probably expect a visit from Commander Erwin any day now–you can tell him whatever you want, then.”

“What did you do to me?” Levi cut in, fists planted in the bed as he tried to make sense of what had happened, how despite all odds he was sitting in this bed with some creature of the shadows attempting to have casual conversation with him as if he hadn’t tried to kill her, as if she hadn’t almost killed him and hadn’t killed so many others before him.

She looked at him in silence for a brief moment, as if sizing him up before she approached with a cup of tea in hand.

“My blood can heal most injuries, if there’s enough time. It’s gross, and it’s risky, but it was your only chance given the situation. But it was also cutting it close." She held out the cup of tea, and Levi eyed it distrustfully. A bit of annoyance crept through her voice, and she held it a little closer to him without spilling it everywhere. "No it’s not your usual black tea–it’s an herbal blend that should help your recovery, so I suggest you drink it anyway.”

When he still seemed reluctant, she grabbed his hand and placed the cup in it to make him hold it. “I’m not going to have gone to all this trouble to save your life just to poison you with tea at least half a dozen people saw me making or on my way here with.”

Honestly, he wasn’t sure he could stomach anything right now after hearing that. She’d made him drink her _blood_. The thought alone made him nauseous as he stared down at the tea whose fragrances were doing nothing to help settle his nausea.

L/N sat down next to him instead of retreating to a chair in the room or leaning against the wall, making Levi stiffen and shift away, glaring at her and about to tell her to get the hell away from him. She reached out with a hand to grasp his chin, which made Levi glare daggers at her and pull out of her grip, his free hand knocking her hand out of the way.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he seethed, on the brink of trying to clock her in the jaw if she didn’t get out and leave him alone.

“Checking something. Believe me, this is a quick exam you want me to make. I said there were risks for healing you the way I did, didn’t I?” she said seriously, her gaze sharp and analyzing as they swept across his features. The way she said it made him even more nauseous, the bad feeling settling deep into his gut.

She kept her hands off this time, though it also meant she got closer, staring intently into his eyes before she started asking questions.

“How’s the light? It’s not too much, causing any discomfort or headaches?” she asked, and it was at that point Levi realized the lighting in the room was all natural sunlight.

“No. A bit at first, not now,” he said shortly.

“Does your jaw hurt? Feel like there’s a stabbing pain, like a tooth trying to break through?”

“ _What_? No.”

Levi leaned away from her, unsettled by the questions he was being asked as well as her close proximity. Surprisingly, she got to her feet with a small nod, closing her eyes and letting out a relieved little sigh. “Good. I just wanted to make sure.”

Levi’s gaze tracked her as she went back to the tea tray, trepidation bubbling up in his gut. “What were the risks?” Levi asked in a deceptively steady tone.

She hesitated in answering him, which was alarming in and of itself, but she ended up choosing not to try and hide it from him.

“If you’d died with my blood in your system, you would have turned into what I am.”

Levi felt numb, except for the painful pounding in his chest and the ring in his ears at her words, his breaths cutting against his lungs. She turned to face him, looking worried, but Levi spoke before she could say anything else.

“Get out.”

The words were heavy and harsh against the silence of the room, and she took another step forward with hesitation, her concern momentarily outweighing her caution.

“Get the _fuck_ out,” he spat venomously, glaring at her to drive the point home. She withdrew into that shell of hers instantly, gathering up the few things she’d brought with her, but pausing with her hand on the doorknob, the wooden door partially closed behind her but still open enough to show her back. He couldn’t see her face, he could just see her hair, the back of her clothes, the corner of the tray.

“I really am glad that you’re alright, Captain. And relieved that you’re still human. I suppose I’ll see you soon after you recover.”

She left before he could throw any other scathing remarks her way, leaving him behind in the silence of his room as the reality of what happened in that warehouse started to press in on and crush him until it felt like the solid ground beneath his feet had disappeared and he couldn’t breathe.

* * *

Two days later, after Levi filled in a dubious Erwin on the reality of what Y/N L/N was hiding, it was quickly established that a proper interrogation was long overdue, especially since she was willing to cooperate and openly answer questions now. They just needed to wait until Levi recovered enough he could move around without drawing attention to his injuries. He’d already been a fast healer, but with L/N’s… _help_ …he recovered in record time. Erwin didn’t say anything, but Levi suspected Erwin wondered if Levi had ever actually been hurt, considering he’d never even seen a wound from him.

Erwin hadn’t seen what Levi had seen, he didn’t have the visual proof, just Levi’s word. Even trusting Levi’s word wasn’t enough for this. They were going to have to do something to show him the validity of Levi’s claims.

Still, Erwin trusted him enough to arrange for the secret interrogation, one that was going to be done in the dungeons, with L/N handcuffed behind bars in a cell while Levi and Erwin stayed on the other side. Levi wasn’t sure how much good a few pieces of iron were going to be in holding her back, but it was the best they could do.

Well, that and something else that Levi expected massive resistance over.

True to her cooperation so far, L/N agreed on the secret meeting in the basement, the three of them rendezvousing in the dungeons in the middle of the day while most of the Scouts were out busy fulfilling duties or enjoying time off with their family or friends. Erwin had glanced between the two at the palpable, hostile tension coming from Levi and the attempt at indifference L/N seemed to be trying to exude in return to Levi’s hostility.

Erwin had already tried to suggest he do most of the talking, but Levi had turned him down flat. Normally, yes, he let Erwin take the lead for these kinds of things–but this had started to cross over into personal a while ago, and he had questions of his own he was _going_ to have answered.

“Pardon the precaution, but if you don’t mind,” Erwin said politely, putting the cuffs on her before stepping aside and holding an arm out towards the cell that was currently open and waiting, a chair already situated on the other side of the bars for her to use.

Levi could have sworn he saw a flash of amusement in her eyes, which confirmed his theory the bars and cuffs did nothing but give an illusion of safety. Still, she went inside without a comment, picking up the chair and bringing it over to the wall, setting it with its back to the wall so she was facing the opposite stone wall instead of facing them directly on the other side of the bars. While she was adjusting her chair and taking her seat, Erwin shut and locked the door, taking up the seat facing the cell while Levi moved over to the bars, leering inside at her.

“We’ll be taking that necklace, too. So you don’t make a break for it in the meantime,” he added. As expected, she cast him a sharp look, the reluctance clear on her face. “Unless, of course, you were lying about being _so_ cooperative.”

She cast him a dirty look at the clear attempt to back her into a corner where she would have to hand it over as a show of good faith, but to his mild surprise, she reached up and carefully undid the necklace she’d nearly killed him trying to get back in the warehouse, coming over to stand in front of him at the bars of the cell and holding it out for him to take. When his fingers closed around the medallion and he attempted to take it, her grip tightened instead of released, causing his gaze to narrow slightly at her as the silver chain went taut, and there was a brief spark in the tension between them both.

“I want that back,” she said seriously, holding his gaze for a few seconds more before she released it, the chain falling loosely against his knuckles with the ends left dangling past his closed fist.

“Depends on what we decide after you spin your tale,” Levi returned with a hint of a bite in his tone. Erwin sighed softly behind him at the antagonizing air between the two, but Levi ignored him, moving over to take up a spot leaning against the wall behind Erwin, finally able to get a good look at this special necklace for the first time. The chain and the border of the medallion were both silver, with strange engravings along the back of the silver medallion piece in symbols he didn’t recognize. The medallion, however, was simply a well-polished black fire opal. Besides that, there didn’t seem to be anything strange, magical, or supernatural about it. It just seemed like a fancy necklace.

“What’s so important about this necklace, anyway? I get it lets you go in the sun, but the way you reacted? There’s more to it than that,” Levi asked, gaze flickering back up to where L/N had retaken her seat in the cell as he tucked the necklace away into a different pocket than he had in the warehouse, just to keep her guessing in case things went south again.

“I’m going to lead this interrogation, Levi, remember?” Erwin reprimanded him steadily. Levi was unfazed.

“It’s as good a place to start as anything,” Levi said indifferently, eyes still fixated on L/N.

“Then you clearly didn’t think too long on the fact that it lets me walk in the sun,” she said with a sigh, turning her head to meet Levi’s gaze unflinchingly. “You could say that necklace is the physical manifestation of my freedom. Without it, I can’t go out in the daylight, yes. I can’t feel the sun. Can’t move around in the day and be part of society. Can’t live on the surface. Without it I’d be kicked back down into the Underground to try scraping by day after day with no way out, for an eternity. So yes, I reacted a little _strongly_ when it was taken from me.”

Oh, she wasn’t holding back her verbal punches after that clear dig at him and his past. This was going to be an interesting interrogation, then. Levi also planned on putting her through the verbal wringer when it was his turn to field the questions to make sure she wasn’t hiding even a shred of dark intentions or ulterior motives. And poor Erwin was going to be smack in the middle of it.

“Let’s take a few steps back, so that everyone’s on the same page,” Erwin said in a voice that spoke volumes for the more mediatory role he was slowly getting pushed into. “Captain Levi’s seen all the evidence he needs to believe this shadow monster theory, but I’m finding it harder to believe without seeing anything to prove it, myself.”

“Vampire.”

“Sorry?”

“Vampire. Not shadow monster. There’s an actual name for what I am, even if the people within the walls seem to have forgotten it for some reason. I’m what’s called a vampire.”

“Vampire, then,” Erwin said patiently. “The problem still remains, though, that I find it hard to believe.”

“It is rather hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said, getting to her feet to look around the room idly, contemplating how she wanted to prove she was what she said she was–a vampire, apparently. She eventually picked up a fairly sizable piece of rock and snapped it in half with a display of strength that further solidified Levi’s thought that those bars and handcuffs did nothing to hold her back. Putting the sharp edge against the inside of her palm, she cut her hand open, angling it in Erwin’s direction so he could watch as the wound healed rapidly in front of them until all that was left was a bit of blood in her palm, not even a faint scar line. And no steam, like when a Titan regenerated. “Is that enough, for the time being? The only other things I can think of to prove I am what I say I am would only make me look a helluva lot more threatening and far less cooperative.”

Erwin had that familiar stoic mask in place as he processed the reality of what Levi had told him with that little display of tangible proof. At least Erwin had some mental preparation for what she was ahead of time–Levi just had it dumped on him all at once.

When he seemed to reach a point he was satisfied with, Erwin leaned forward, hands folded together and resting against his chin as a hard and serious light appeared in his eyes, focused on L/N on the other side of those bars.

“Levi has already filled me in on what he’s been able to observe, and what he’s heard from local legends. I’m of the opinion we should get some clarity from you–confirmation or denial on the accuracy of these details, anything we might be missing. That way we have a better understanding of who we’re dealing with.”

L/N looked away, Levi able to catch the briefest flash of resignation in her eyes as she chose to instead look at the wall across from her again. “Know thine enemy, correct?”

“Well…whether you’re our enemy or our ally has yet to be decided. Ideally, we’ll know after we finish talking.”

“What do you want to know?”

For the time being, Erwin took over the interrogation entirely while Levi acted the silent observer, giving her soft questions that were easy to answer and shedding light on the basics of what she was.

“Legends say you’re immortal. Y/N Frazier supposedly died about forty years ago, which would make you–”

“Late sixties, approaching seventies. Except I don’t age, so even though I’ve been around for that long, I’m frozen in my mid-twenties. I’ll never get a day older.”

“And the blood drinking?”

“Unfortunately very true. So long as I keep a healthy diet of blood in my system, I function like any other human being. Except, I don’t actually need to eat and drink regular food to survive. It helps me look normal and blend in, I can still enjoy it, benefit from herbal teas, and eating and drinking regular food can help with…cravings.”

“Levi’s noted that you go out once a week to satiate your hunger. That’s quite a lot of people to have killed over forty years or longer, if you stuck with the once a week approach.”

“It’s the diet and lifestyle. I could go longer without it if I wasn’t in a field where I’m likely to be around blood often and need to keep cravings tightly under control. Not to mention I’m not taking the best quality blood out there, which unfortunately means I need more across a shorter span of time because it doesn’t keep me satisfied as long.”

“Blood quality?”

“Yeah, the better quality blood, the stronger the vampire and the less often they need to feed. Animal blood could work in a tight spot, but it would be miserable, and it would be harder to resist human blood constantly denying that basic nature, so it’s not an option for me. People that do a lot of drinking and drugs and other pollutants to their bodies have a lower quality blood, and surprisingly lifestyle has an impact as well. Certain bloodlines are…exceptional: top tier stuff, like perfectly curated tea leaves.”

“And your…diet?”

“A lot of pollutants…bare minimum stuff. I try to single out people who thrive off the suffering of others, the people doing the really nasty stuff to others where they think no one is looking. Sometimes I’m rushed, and I don’t always have the luxury of a full background check before targeting someone, but I have my standards and tricks for luring the worst people out. I have lines I don’t want to cross. It satiates my hunger, but I could do better. I just refuse to feed off innocent people…like most vampires seem to do.”

“What if you didn’t feed off anyone? What happens?”

“Slow and painful starvation over…I don’t know, decades, centuries? It’s not pleasant. Someone threatened me with it once and from what I understand its a very slow and agonizing decay over a very, very, _very_ long period of time.” 

“You mentioned how your diet can affect how strong you are–what does it affect? Levi’s already noticed you have keen senses, fast reflexes, strength, speed…”

“He’s not wrong,” she said softly. “One of my first days here I got in trouble for holding back on my fellow cadets. The problem is, if I don’t hold back, someone could get seriously hurt. I can move faster than the average person–I could probably intercept an arrow, maybe even a bullet. Reflexes fall into that same category. I have enhanced senses, definitely. I can hear your heartbeats, and the heartbeats of the people above us, a mile out if I’m not focusing, a little further if I am. I’ve learned to sift through all the excess noise and focus on certain sounds or voices, or to block it out if I need to. Sight is much sharper than normal, too–as is smell.”

Her gaze shifted to Levi, and she directly addressed him once more. “That’s why you couldn’t sneak up on me until I was in the Underground. Then I was distracted and blocking out the smells around me. Normally, though, you have a very distinct scent–not bad, just distinct–that I grew accustomed to picking up on. And sometimes the breeze carried it even further.”

Bold of her to address him. As he listened to her casually discuss her abilities and killing people, his expression had darkened, scowling deeply. Sure, he could give way on the matter of having to kill to survive. He could see that much now–at least she had to in order to _survive_ so she didn’t die a slow and painful death, or hurt someone innocent by accident. But how casually she discussed it, how flippant she sounded talking about taking life– _that_ didn’t sit well with him.

Now, however, as she discussed all of these strengths of hers, all these advantages she had over the rest of him, there was something else that was nagging at the back of his mind. He remembered the exhilaration in her eyes when she’d killed that Titan despite the close call Eld had in that exact moment, and how he’d been concerned she might not be taking it seriously. Yes, she’d told him when he was still dying that she joined to help, her intentions there had been pure–she’d felt she could find purpose coming to the Scouts, that maybe the death that followed her just so she could survive could mean something if she dedicated her life and abilities to serving a purpose greater than herself.

Hmm…maybe she did take all the killing she did to survive seriously. It was hard to tell with her. She was so flippant and casual talking about it now, but back then, there had been notes of something…deep and unsettling in her voice. An emotion that didn’t quite have a word to go with it, but revolved around the knowledge of so many people dying so you could live, and wanting to make sure it wasn’t for nothing.

Shit, now wasn’t the time to be sympathizing, he had a purpose here–he was here to seek out any ill intent, and he had to shove aside the sympathizing for her plight or anything else that crept up for _later_ reflection. Right now was the time to dig in and search no matter how harsh he got with his questions.

And his current concern was that the situation that was life and death, horror and tragedy for the rest of them, was nothing more than a game, a simple change of pace, mere _exercise_ for her. From the sound of it, between her regeneration and all these enhanced senses, strength, reflexes, speed, all of it, it was like she was fucking invincible. There was no real risk for her like there was for the rest of them. All this struggle and sacrifice and suffering from the people around her, and she had nothing to lose, there was no real threat towards her, personally–she didn’t even have to put any effort into it.

Their life and death struggle was like a game to her.

It pissed him off the more he thought about it, until he couldn’t keep a lid on it anymore.

And her directly addressing him like that gave him the opportunity to let the first accusation fly.

Voice low and deadly, chilling as ice, Levi’s hard gaze drilled into her from where he was leaning against the stone wall of the dungeon. “It’s not even a real risk to you is it, going out there where the rest of us struggle, suffer, and die? Just a fucking _game_ for you with how fucking invincible you are, from the sounds of it–”

Her eyes flashed, and her voice grew colder to match his chilly tone as she cut him off before he could get too far with his accusation.

“It’s still a risk for me, too. Maybe not as great, maybe I have a better chance, but it still would only take one wrong step. Unlike a Titan, I can’t grow back a full limb. I don’t age, but I can still die. Some deaths, okay, fine, I’ll come back from it. I’ll come back from a bullet to the brain, or suffocating to death, or a stab through the heart with a blade. I can’t come back from _decapitation_. Just one bite in the wrong place, and I’m just as fucked as anyone else in that situation,” she said bitingly, taking a deep breath to try and calm down, her tone losing some of its chilling edge as she continued. “It doesn’t help that my reactions play out faster than the ODM gear can function. While everyone else was learning how to properly operate the ODM gear and balance and react and all that, I had to focus more on slowing down for the gear than anything else, because if I react too fast at the wrong time, and the ODM gear skips something I was trying to do because I did it too fast, I could sail right into the thing’s arm or mouth. I might not have been putting in the same kind of effort in the same places as everyone else, but that doesn’t mean there’s not any effort being put in by me, doesn’t mean that I don’t have to be careful as well, that there’s no risk. Hell, one of my greatest fears is something catching that necklace and causing it to come off in the middle of the day on an expedition. I’d be fucked, dead in seconds with no shade for protection. There’s risk for me, too, even if it’s a different kind of risk.”

While Levi put her monologue aside for later to mull over, letting it soothe his concerns that she wasn’t taking the expeditions seriously for the time being, Erwin leapt for the reins of the interrogation again.

“So far you _have_ given the impression of invincibility, though. His concern is justified,” Erwin said diplomatically, and she sighed, visibly calming herself down again.

“I’m not invincible. I have rules and limitations just like everyone else,” she mumbled, leaning her head back against the stone wall.

“Like?”

Her eyes flickered over to Erwin. “You can understand why I’m hesitant to be forthcoming about that kind of information.”

“Too bad,” Levi said flatly. “You agreed to talk and answer questions. If you don’t answer them, we’ll have to assume the worst.”

And if she wasn’t willing to tell them how she wasn’t invincible, they would have to assume she didn’t want them knowing how to stop her, which would mean she was actually planning something sinister.

“Vampire or not, it’s never a comfortable thing telling someone exactly how to kill or stop you,” she mumbled, running a hand through her hair, an uncomfortable look on her face before she reluctantly began to speak.

“I already mentioned being out in the sun unprotected for too long can kill me. So can decapitation. A wooden stake to the heart for some reason kills a vampire. So does burning alive. I already said that I can’t grow back limbs–my regeneration is slowed down if I’m near death or haven’t fed in a while. Vice-versa, I heal faster when I’m well fed or I’m feeding. Oh, here’s a weird one–I can’t enter a living space for a human being unless I’m invited in. Community places that people rotate out of like inns or the barracks are a grey spot, I can go in there, but private homes, property, anything that is the private living space of a human being I can’t enter without being invited.”

_Wait a second…She has to be fucking joking, right?_

She was just in his bedroom the other day–she’d carried him back to his office, to his living quarters, without being invited inside. She’d been in and out of his office running errands for him.

But that first time, when she’d first been made an aid…he’d thought it was odd, but he’d assumed she was trying to be polite but had pushed it to annoying levels. He distinctly remembered how she’d waited until he had said the words _come in_ before she entered his office for the first time. She’d been waiting for him to truly invite her in instead of making some vague noise or answering with a simple, yes, what, whatever it was he felt at the time. After that she hadn’t waited for another _come in_ , she’d just entered his office like a normal person.

He’d had a safe space, a barrier she couldn’t cross between her and him, a place she couldn’t enter unless he allowed it, and unknowingly, he had thrown away that layer of protection. She’d been well aware that was what he was doing, too.

He felt like some part of his privacy had been invaded, knowing that she shouldn’t be able to enter his office and bedroom, but because of that one time he had invited her in without understanding the consequences, he wasn’t going to get that safe space back.

Her gaze wandered over to Levi, spotting the angry look on his face, and she jumped to her own defense before he could voice it.

“Before you get angry about me being invited into _your_ office, I wasn’t exactly given much of a choice considering I was given a job where that protection barrier was going to come down at _some point_. How else was I going to be your aid if I couldn’t come into your office to deliver something or pick something up? The moment I was made your squad’s aid, it was something that couldn’t be helped.” She sighed. “It’s not something I’ve taken advantage of, and I have no intention of doing so in the future, if that makes you feel any better. But future reference–a good way to keep a vampire out and to maybe pick out a vampire, is to stay vague when letting people into your private spaces. Don’t outright tell them to come in–just imply it. A vampire needs specific, verbal permission to come inside, anyone else can just walk right in. It’s a good habit to have.”

“Anything else?” Erwin prompted before Levi could do anything more but sulk in the background at the revelation that he’d let a vampire into his office and now he couldn’t do anything to take that back.

“Yes–something rather major, actually.” She got up from her seat and walked over to the bars of the cell, leaning casually forward against them and centered her gaze, once again, on Levi. “Ever since Petra had me start making your tea, I’ve spiking it–”

He _knew_ he should have thrown out that tea!

“How the hell is that supposed to be reassuring?” Levi fumed, cutting her off before she could finish. As if finding out about the being invited in thing wasn’t bad enough!

“Let me finish before you bite my head off,” she said with a slight scowl. “I’ve been spiking the tea with white sage. The reason I’ve been doing that is because it protects a person from vampires. It’s practically poison to a vampire. It burns the hell out of us if it touches our skin, it’s like swallowing acid if we consume it. Anyone who has white sage in their system, a vampire can’t safely bite. Ingesting it will cause enough pain to knock them out, if they ingest enough. At the very least it will incapacitate them long enough to try to bolt or fight back.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Why spike _my_ tea?”

“Well, first of all, access. You’re the one whose drinks I’ve had access to. Secondly…remember what I said about certain bloodlines being _exceptional_?” She let that comment hang in the air, staring at him until she saw realization spark in his eyes. His blood–his blood was one of the exceptional ones that would make her stronger if she partook. “An exceptional bloodline also means it’s harder to resist. I did it as a precaution. It’s a damn good thing I did, too.”

When she was trying to save his life. Her eyes, the noises she made, how much she seemed to be struggling, and yet she didn’t so much as lick the blood off her fingers. Because when she started making his tea, she’d made his blood poisonous to her so she _couldn’t_ bite him, even if she lost control.

He…didn’t know how to feel about that.

As infuriated as he was at the thought of her purposely tampering with his drinks and violating the gesture of trust it had been to even allow her to make his tea by _spiking his drinks_ , it had been done to protect him–and it already _had_ protected him. Even if he hadn’t known it at the time.

It wasn’t like she could tell him she was adding white sage to his drinks to prevent her from accidentally killing him some day because his blood was too tempting to resist. She’d been trying to hide this whole other world, trying to keep her true nature secret–it wasn’t like she could tell him she was going to add white sage to his drinks to protect him.

 _Don’t think about it too much right now, just absorb the information and move on–how you feel about it can come later_ , he chastised himself again, once more shutting down the stirrings of sympathy for her that was egged on by these little bits of extra information they were receiving about what she’d actually been doing in the background all this time.

He still had to press some of her buttons to answer a few more questions. There were still a few questions he had, and he wanted to see how she would react under stress. If they could trust her to keep a lid on her emotions and keep from losing control.

That seemed to be a running theme for her. Control. If she couldn’t keep control of herself, someone could end up seriously hurt.

He’d already almost bled to death in front of her, so that was one trial by fire she’d already passed. However, he wanted to test out a different kind of self-restraint. From the sound of it, with all these abilities of hers, she could accidentally kill someone in a fit of rage.

So…did she have enough discipline to keep a tight grip on her own leash? If anyone was going to test the theory, he was probably the best person to do so, and now was the time.

Keeping that cold and indifferent exterior he’d kept up through this entire discussion, Levi spoke up after a few moments of silence passed, likely from Erwin giving Levi a chance to pursue the discussion about her spiking his tea.

Levi was about to derail this entire interrogation.

"You sure know how to paint yourself as the well-intentioned victim.” Levi’s chilling tone echoed around the suddenly silent dungeon, his gaze boring down on her without a hint of the sympathy that kept getting stirred up from hearing about the situation she was in, the way she viewed things. It was just cold indifference he was projecting towards her. “The only problem is, I don’t think someone who isn’t above slaughtering her own best friend is anything _close_ to a victim, let alone someone to be trusted.”

She stiffened as he brought up Victoria, her own demeanor rapidly shifting away from that casual posture she’d been keeping this entire time to someone who was ready for a fight. Levi kept pressing on, sensing he might have found what he was looking for.

“If you’re not above that, how the hell are we supposed to take your word for any of this? How could we _possibly_ trust _anything_ you have to say?”

Her posture was rigid, eyes holding anger and her teeth grit even as she tried to take a calming breath and answer in an even tone. Erwin, meanwhile, was giving Levi a sidelong look, trying to glean what Levi hoped to find by so clearly antagonizing her.

“I get that you’re doing your job and you’re trying to figure out the kind of threat I pose, I get that you don’t trust me and you’re assuming the worst, but for god’s sake ask instead of assuming you know something when you clearly don’t understand anything about it except what I tell you.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously at the end towards Levi, a bite in her voice most people wouldn’t dare to use when talking to him. Even behind bars, even when she was the one in the position to be interrogated, she didn’t hesitate to bite back, showing a surprisingly strong spirit despite that timid exterior she’d been projecting in public all this time.

He just needed to push a little further, and he could probably coax a reaction out of her. Hopefully, she really was in control of herself and it wouldn’t result in anything deadly. If she didn’t have control of herself…well, hopefully the bars would delay her enough to allow him to react fast enough and intercept her.

“It’s a legitimate question. If you’ve been struggling with this violent nature of yours since you were born, and you’ve already hurt people like Victoria, what’s to say you won’t hurt anyone else? That you won’t snap, lose control–that _we_ won’t be next?”

Bringing up Victoria by name was like he’d said some kind of trigger word. Her voice dripped with freezing venom, even as deep-running hurt flashed in her eyes, proving that she was, in fact, lashing out.

He finally found a button that set her off, information spilling out of her in a torrent of unbridled emotion stirred up by his brisk, accusatory statement.

“Vampires aren’t _born_ , Captain, they’re made. Which means a few decades ago I was just as human as you. Just a regular carpenter’s daughter living in Wall Rose in a no name town, where I probably would have married, had kids, and died in obscurity if I hadn’t been caught in the rain one night and crossed paths with the worst person I could have stumbled upon.”

Her cold voice paused, all that chilling intensity focused on Levi and Levi alone, Erwin temporarily forgotten amidst the verbal back and forth they were caught in. Her words were meant for only him, and she didn’t hold back on any perceived courtesy anymore.

“Do you know how a vampire’s made, Captain? It got mentioned when we talked briefly after you woke up,“ she said in an almost mocking tone to go with her rhetorical question. Realization was stirring in the back of his mind as he remembered what that _risk_ had been in saving his life, but she pressed on before the full implications of that fact could settle in. “A human being has to _die_ with vampire blood in their system. And then they have to drink human blood to finish the transformation. I may not know the specifics, if you have to be dead for a certain period of time before the blood makes you a vampire instead of just heals you, if you have to drink from a human in a set time limit–I don’t know any of that. I didn’t get an explanation. There was no _induction_ , no _passing comment_ , not even a _hint_ that I wasn’t human anymore. I woke up unable to remember the night before thinking I was simply sick after catching a cold in the rain, and I went to my parent’s house because it felt like the kind of sick I wanted someone to keep an eye on me for in case it got really bad.”

Details of that "double homicide” flashed in Levi’s mind rapidly, and he felt sick to his stomach as the missing information she provided started to fill in the gaps and bring the larger image into focus in his mind. As schooled as his expression was, she was staring at him so intently that the realization in his eyes didn’t escape her notice.

“Now it’s clicking. That night before the double homicide Y/N Frazier is now famous for in that town? I was _murdered_. And because I had no explanation or understanding of what was happening to me, I didn’t know to stay away from the people I cared about. So when Victoria came to visit me…”

She swallowed and looked away when her voice wavered at the end, trying to hide the sudden flash of vulnerability and remorse that came with a haunting memory.

But then her eyes flashed again, and she glared at Levi from the other side of the bars.

“So no, _Captain_ , I didn’t _ask_ for this, and it’s not as _simple_ as being _born_ like this. It was _done_ to me. I never had a _choice_. Maybe try to keep that in mind in the future when you’re fishing for answers instead of blindly accusing me of something.”

Well aware that he’d crossed some kind of boundary after that acidic spiel from her, Levi refrained from poking at what happened that night any further. He needed to back off that subject–a lot of these subjects, actually–and do some thinking before he said anything else.

As for the interrogation…

One more push, one more time antagonizing her, and he’d back off if it didn’t yield anything.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Levi said curtly. And she hadn’t. Instead of answering if she was a threat to them,, she’d gone on a long-winded spiel about her past and how he was making wild accusations.. “All the good intentions in the world won’t change the fact that you’re a threat to us. Are you?”

She made a noise of frustration, teeth grinding together in a barely restrained growl of frustration before she stepped back from the cell bars, _snapped the chain on the handcuffs_ without a second thought, clawing the cuff parts off like wet paper and letting them fall to the ground. Levi straightened up from the wall as she reached for the bars of the cell, stepping in front of Erwin protectively with his arm held out in warning as she bent the bars aside to step right through with a bit of bending and wiggling. Behind his back, Levi had drawn a knife and was holding it firmly in hand, even if, given the information they’d just received, it wouldn’t do much long-term good. But it could at least slow her down.

She didn’t move any closer, but Levi wasn’t assured–if anything, he was on edge now, heart rate picking up as they stared each other down.

“Yeah, that’s reassuring–so you’re an _unpredictable_ threat,” Levi said scathingly. His grip shifted on the knife, flipping it around to a more comfortable position and a better grip he could use to lash out quickly and without warning. Erwin shifted slightly behind him, but considering Levi couldn’t see him with his attention focused on L/N, he didn’t know how Erwin was reacting to the situation besides that slight shift after seeing Levi’s grip showing he was ready to act.

“Because I am.”

That…was not an answer he’d been expecting. His head tilted slightly to the side, eyebrows raising. She didn’t _look_ like she’d suddenly gone crazy. If anything, she just looked exasperated right now.

Throwing a hand aside as if to gesture to the hole she’d just made in the cell bars, a short, bittersweet laugh escaping her. “Fucking hell, don’t ever treat a vampire as anything _less_ , because if they are a threat and you give them the benefit of the doubt, its too late. I get the reaction and intention to treat me as nothing more than a monstrous threat, it’s a _healthy_ reaction, it’s a reaction that would give you a chance against a vampire that _didn’t_ have good intentions, which is _most_ of them. But if I was really after you I would have just done it and left by now. I wouldn’t be wasting my time sitting here giving you the best explanation I can muster and enduring the accusations. And I wouldn’t be going to the lengths that I have to take the necessary precautions to make sure I _don’t_ accidentally hurt someone ever again, especially someone in the Scouts.”

Levi’s grip on the knife behind his back relaxed, and he slowly started to slide it back into its holster, both him and L/N taking a few breaths in the tense silence and gradually calming down from the mood that had tipped towards explosive.

“Look…” she said in a sharp exhale, gaze sliding between Levi directly in front of her, and what she could see of Erwin behind him. “I can’t tell you that I’m not a risk, because it would be a lie. Your question shouldn’t be am I a risk, but am I a risk you’re willing to take. If not…I’ll go quietly, try to find another purpose, I guess. But I would like to stay, and do what I can, _here_.”

Behind Levi, Erwin got to his feet, putting a hand on Levi’s shoulder as a silent way to tell him to stand down for the time being, stepping up to the woman in front of them, studying her head to toe. She let him do so, meeting his gaze unwaveringly despite its intensity.

“Levi, let L/N here have her necklace back. I think I’ve heard all I need to for now.”

Levi didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate, didn’t so much as give Erwin a sideways glance. He simply pulled the necklace out of the pocket he’d stowed it in, holding it out for L/N to take. She did so hesitantly, looking between Erwin and Levi with an unsure expression on her face, like she wasn’t sure if it was a trick or a test.

“Go back to your duties–I’m sure the rest of Levi’s squad has plenty for you to do while we make our decision,” Erwin said simply, turning to Levi and nodding towards the exit of the dungeon to signal that they were going to leave together.

“I’ll…fix the bars, first,” she said awkwardly, standing in place as they turned to leave like she didn’t know what to do with herself, necklace still in hand instead of around her neck.

She was just as socially awkward as she was sharp when she needed to be. Underneath that timid hesitation when it came to being around people, to trying to be a part of society again, there was one hell of a strong personality. It was like being entranced by the delicate petals atop a rose and then realizing when you wrapped your hand around its stem just how thorn-covered it actually was.

That’s what she was. Not an enigma–a rose, one with soft but vibrant petals and leaves, but sharp thorns running all the way down the stem that wouldn’t hesitate to pierce skin and draw blood.

Erwin turned to give her a small smile, adding in the slightest nod. “Please. A cell with a hole in it doesn’t do us much good,” he commented humorously before leading the way for him and Levi out of the dungeon.

 _Now_ he could let himself consider everything he’d heard. And he could already tell it was not going to be easy.

In his mind, the decision between whether or not to let her stay was made. What was left was to process everything they’d learned and figure out how to move forward. And in Levi’s case, how to make reparations.


	10. Reparations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yaaaaaayyyyy I got this one done. For some reason I’ve been in a weird spot where I write more on my phone and my focus is better when I write on my phone, but I’m also super vulnerable to typos because AUTOCORRECT and its just harder for me to spot on the smaller screen with the tiny text, so excuse any typos.

_***Levi’s POV*** _

“I’ll admit, it would have been nice to know ahead of time that you were going to hijack the interrogation like that to antagonize her.”

Levi ignored the pointed jab at his actions down in the dungeons, gaze instead roaming around and taking stock of the people they past in a surveillance instinct too ingrained into his being by now for him to shut it off even going down the street towards a tea shop.

Considering L/N could hear so far out, even when she wasn’t paying attention, Erwin and Levi had decided to leave headquarters entirely to have this conversation. Which was why they were now headed for a tea shop instead of Erwin’s office to discuss something so confidential. Or at least their opinions on the situation, not necessarily the information itself.

"Did you at least get what you wanted out of it?" Erwin asked as they took seats at one of the outside tables.

"I did. Mostly. You?"

"I was skeptical when you told me, but after that little display of hers, she's clearly not human. Not anymore." Erwin leaned back in his seat and appraised Levi, their conversation pausing momentarily as they placed their order with the waitress that came outside to check on them. Once she went back inside, Erwin continued. "If you have more questions, why didn't you ask them before we left?"

"It had nothing to do with why we were there. Personal curiosity. And it didn't seem like the time to ask."

Especially after he'd goaded her like that, making jabs at painful memories for her until she reacted, throwing harsh accusations at her semi-blindly and seeing if anything stuck. The last thing she would want to do would be to give clarifying details about her past traumas to satiate his curiosity.

Her tale made her origins make more sense, but there were a few details that still weren't so clear to him.

The way she explained it, she was attacked and turned by a vampire the night before--for reasons unknown, he noticed. She hadn't said why she was turned, or by who. She'd actually glossed over that part and moved on--and then went home, not knowing what happened to her, thinking she was sick. Her friend came to visit her, Y/N lost control, attacked and killed her, then fled. He was sure there were details to make the tale far more gruesome, but this was what he knew for sure without letting his imagination run wild.

But then she'd shown up dead a few days later as well. That was the part he was trying to figure out.

_“Some deaths, okay, fine, I'll come back from it.”_

So, she ran away after the initial panic, and then came back solely to fake her death so they wouldn't keep looking for her.

And by fake her death, she went for a... _temporary_ death, something she would come back from.

But why go so far as to let herself be buried? It was a closed casket funeral, so she could have snuck out before they sealed the casket and no one would have known. Why wait?

He hadn't forgotten the fear and trauma in her eyes when she'd mentioned being buried alive was one of her deepest fears. And now the mental image in his mind of a woman clawing desperately at a coffin, screaming for help while no one could hear her had a face to go with it, the face of someone he _knew_ , no less.

It was humanly impossible to break out of a grave and crawl your way out. But if you had vampire strength, and every time you suffocated from the lack of oxygen or the dirt crushing down on you and maybe even getting into your lungs...then it was possible. So long as you died a few times on the way up.

Shit...something like that had to do some damage to a person.

Not to mention what came after. Forty _years_ living in the Underground, roughly. He'd only been down there a little over half the time she had. And he hadn't spent it like she had--skulking in the shadows killing people because what she was demanded she kill to survive no matter where she was, and she couldn't go above ground not because it was denied to her, but because if she did she would literally die. Yeah, he'd killed plenty of people in the Underground as well, but far less, and for a reason that was entirely different even if it could be worded the same. He killed in fights because the Underground was that dangerous, or he was protecting people he cared about. She had to actively hunt and kill people to...feed.

If she'd been in the Underground before he was even born...he wondered if they had ever crossed paths, and he just didn't remember.

Hell, with her criteria for who she hunted and killed, he was surprised she hadn't killed Kenny in all that time with him Underground.

Or maybe she had, after Kenny left. It wasn't like Levi would know. Though he was fairly certain the man had gone topside, which would mean out of her reach and away from her hunting grounds.

If only there was an alternative to her diet. She’d laid out why it couldn’t be helped, and he understood that, they were good reasons. But still, if there was another way...

“You're thinking about something rather hard over there, Levi,” Erwin commented, and Levi realized he’d been staring intently at the table and had even failed to notice that the waitress was in the process of delivering their tea. Erwin was also watching him, though his hands were still in motion, his analytical gaze fixated on Levi’s still form. Shaken out of his thoughts, Levi leaned back so he wasn’t leaning forward intently anymore, picking up his teacup to start drinking before it got cold. Erwin waited until the waitress left to continue talking. “Is it something I should know about her? Another hunch, maybe? The last one was _mostly_ right.”

Levi snorted softly at that. Mostly right his ass. He’d been thinking murder and treason and assassinations, someone out to get them, someone seeking to harm people in the Scouts. Ulterior motives and selfishness, malice.

Maybe the murder hadn’t been that far off, considering her body count, if he did the math right in his head. And maybe she had been hiding a secret. Perhaps she was dangerous, but so was Levi. It didn’t mean she was an enemy.

“No,” he said curtly, putting an end to Erwin thinking Levi might be holding out on him regarding his suspicions after how off they’d both been about this situation. “Like I said, it doesn't have to do with whether or not she's trustworthy and if she should be in the Scouts. Just personal curiosity.”

“So you believe her? About her intentions?” Erwin asked casually before taking a sip from his cup, eyes cast down as he spoke but flickering up to gauge Levi’s reaction once he finished speaking.

Levi eyed him because of the look on his face, but answered nonetheless. “...I do. She was sincere down there, some would say too honest. Most people try to hide the fact they’ve killed hundreds--thousands--of people, or that they could kill the people who didn’t trust them without blinking an eye, but she was upfront about it. She didn’t have to be. She’s dangerous, that’s a reality no matter how you look at it, but she’s attempting to channel that into helping instead of just causing damage.” Levi sighed, setting down his cup. “I assumed a lot about her intentions and where she came from, and it's going to bite me in the ass.”

And he was probably going to have to put some effort into making amends after all this--especially with how he’d antagonized her down there and clearly crossed a boundary. Several boundaries, actually. And now that the moment had passed, the guilt was starting to settle in. He’d accused her about some harsh stuff, some of which she was sensitive about, given her reactions. She was the one who had to live with what she was, so he doubted someone going after the very things you might cling to in order to retain your humanity was something anyone would take kindly to. After she saved his life--even if it had also been her that had almost killed him to begin with--after she protected him from herself and other vampires, even if he wasn’t aware, after she’d gone out of her way to learn from and appease the entire squad, after going through years of training to get where she was now, after putting so much at risk when she could have stayed safely in the shadows, after trying so hard to find a place topside, he’d jabbed at pretty much everything. Her basic motives, her humanity, her intentions, her personality, everything.

He had a lot of damage control to do moving forward if they were going to keep working together. He sincerely hoped he’d only damaged the well and hadn’t poisoned the water. A damaged well he could fix, but a poisoned water supply…

Levi’s gaze narrowed at Erwin as he realized the other man still hadn’t said anything, his suspicions solidifying.

“What about you? Do you think she’s a risk you’re willing to take?” Levi asked, echoing her words from down in the dungeon Levi had immediately known would catch Erwin’s attention.

“I am a man who likes a good gamble,” Erwin said with a bittersweet smile, resting his cheek on his fist as he considered the situation before them. “As long as she’s not attacking other Scouts, she’s trying to keep her bloodlust under control, she’s not causing problems for or bringing more danger upon the Scouts...I don’t see why we shouldn’t let her stay. From the sounds of it, having a vampire willingly join our ranks wanting to use all those abilities to help our cause is a once in a lifetime chance. She’s offering it on a silver platter. As long as she can keep herself under control, which she’s been able to do so far, I say we take her up on her offer.”

“And if she can’t? If something happens and she loses control?” Levi asked, eyebrows raised. She’d said it herself, she _was_ a threat, there was always a chance something could happen, and that shouldn’t be forgotten. But what would they do if she did slip up with no sign of being able to correct herself before it got out of hand?

“Then she’ll be our responsibility to take care of,” Erwin said evenly, gazing at Levi in a way that made him believe _Levi_ would be the one to take care of her if she stepped out of line. He had the best chance, yes, but it would still be risky. “Hopefully we won’t have to kill her if anything goes wrong, she’s valuable, and it would be a huge setback to lose her vampire abilities...but if it ever comes to that…”

“It won’t be a problem,” Levi said flatly. He meant that in the matter of conflict of interest, not that killing her if it ever came to that wouldn’t be difficult.

Erwin nodded. “She stays in the Scouts, then. I’ll have to factor in all this new information about where best to put her. She probably shouldn’t be anywhere near medical, for her sanity’s sake. And Levi?” Levi fixed him with a stare as if to ask what the hell was up with his change of tone, which Erwin ignored. “Considering the strangling tension between the two of you down in the dungeon, are you going to ease up now that you have the story--for the most part--or do I need to switch her to a different squad?”

Levi scoffed. “I’m not going to apologize for being angry about the fact that she kills people, Erwin.”

“It's not like she has much of a choice, from the sound of it. And she’s doing rather well, given her situation. A lot of thought had to have gone into coming topside and joining the Scouts, how to pull it off. She was ready with those questions, and considering she wasn’t planning on us figuring out what she was, that means she already went over those questions herself. She’s going with what she believes to be the best route, and considering she’s more of an expert on the subject than we’ll probably ever be…”

Levi waved him off--he didn’t need this explanation, he already knew this. She wasn’t going to prey on innocent people, she couldn’t afford to downgrade her diet too much considering she needed to be in peak health and control fighting in the Scouts, and she couldn’t just _stop_ unless she wanted to die a slow and agonizing death.

Starvation over decades, maybe even centuries…

Regular starvation was bad enough, he knew that from personal experience. He couldn’t imagine going out like that--he wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Especially self-inflicted.

Levi’s gaze wandered to the few people in the street, moving idly from one person to the next, not really paying them any attention beyond basic people watching as he brought himself to his decision.

While he _understood_ her position, that didn’t mean he was entirely comfortable with it. But was he willing to try and make this work, to keep her on his squad--this time as his decision, not a decision Erwin made in the name of surveillance--and see if things could still work out despite the mess this entire ordeal had turned into that almost ended in his death.

Was it a damaged well, or poisoned water?

Was he going to cut his losses, or try to fix this?

“...Don’t put her on another squad,” he finally told Erwin. “She’ll still have her skills put to the best use with my Squad. I’ll figure out how to deal with...everything.”

He was going to try and make this work, despite the current friction between them.

The only question now, was how?

* * *

Erwin was the one to tell L/N that she was staying in the Scouts, of course, and by extension he was also the one to tell her she'd remain on Levi's squad, and that it was Levi's job to keep an eye on her and make sure she stayed in line. As for Levi, it was back to business as usual while Erwin handled speaking with L/N.

And two days later, Levi abruptly decided that everyone was going to do a deep clean of HQ, assigning everyone at least one room, with L/N having two considering how fast and how well she cleaned, and himself having three so that he had plenty of time to _think_ while he was cleaning.

Now that his concerns about betrayal and deceit had been assuaged, he could finally allow the softer sides of her he’d glimpsed to settle in his mind, too. Between the darker side he now had a better picture of and the person he’d been seeing since she joined the Scouts, he could finally form a more complete picture of the new person on his squad and start to decide what he thought of her.

Any lingering concepts in his mind that she wasn’t up to the job went out the window--except for a general concern about her being around too much blood. She hadn’t been in the middle of a truly hairy expedition with people dying left and right. She’d been struggling when he was bleeding out in front of her--what would it be like when there were people dying bloody all around her?

Then again, she’d already pointed out that his blood was particularly alluring.

That was still an odd thing to think about--he was probably going to do his best _not_ to think about it.

He wasn’t too worried about her being able to hand the more...psychological stresses of being a Scout. If she could handle being directly responsible for death, and being around it so much after living in and hunting in the Underground, she might fare better than most in the environment.

If it hadn't been the sharper, harder edge he'd seen to her personality in the dungeon, the knowledge of the things she'd already seen and been through, he'd be worried she had too _soft_ of a temperament and personality for the Scouts. It had been what he'd seen from her before the whole vampire thing came out.

She was the woman who went out of her way to comfort the horses and make sure they knew they could trust her. Who sat in the field with the horses and simply soaked in the sun's rays while drawing whatever she could see--namely horses, at least once the man who had been watching her, yet she never said a word. She was the woman with a tea garden in a hidden corner of the Scout’s headquarters so that she could save more of her salary...and use it to shelter and provide for the parents who didn't know, and would probably never know, they're daughter was still alive. The woman who snuck treats out to the horses from her own plate, who'd gotten at least half of Levi’s squad drinking their tea with a bit of white sage for health purposes--only Levi aware of just how much it was actually doing for them. The one who had asked for a different kind of lesson or tutoring from each squad member so they wouldn’t feel like she was some air-headed newbie that thought she was better than everyone because she was put on a fast track to Levi’s squad fresh out of the cadets, so that they could feel like they were still teaching her something, that she was learning from them. She was the kind of person who made little gestures like covering him with her cloak when she saw him asleep at the table without a second thought, or timing a fresh cup of black tea almost perfectly to help keep him alert when despite his insomnia he would start to feel tired in the middle of the day, who'd risked the loss of a leg to make sure Eld wouldn't get hurt even after Levi killed the Titan, and who had saved his life even though, at the time, doing so was a great risk to her, because he could put a swift end to the life she'd been trying to build above ground.

She was a good person at heart. Complicated as hell, still dangerous and a risk, and she had her skeletons, her demons and dark secrets, her flaws...but still, a good person at heart.

He’d been watching her closely long enough to pick up on all of that and then some, even if he’d tucked most of it away for later evaluation considering at the time he was worried it might be a front for some insidious ulterior motive.

And he had to do something to try and mend the relationship they had. They couldn't function as part of a squad with all this tension and friction, let alone as captain and subordinate, definitely not as a team. There had to be some level of trust if they were going to be working together in the future, and right now, there was pretty much none, mostly because of him. And he had to be the one to make a first step towards repairing the damage that he had inflicted so that they could start building at least the groundwork of a working trust in one another. They would need it when they went out in the field, because all that raw ability meant nothing if they couldn’t function with each other.

Levi scrubbed harder at the stone floor, seeing his fingertips turn pale with the rest of his hands red from the hot soapy water and the pressure he was putting on the brush.

"Captain?"

Levi sighed, leaning back and putting the brush back into the water, turning and lowering the cloth over his face to look over at Petra standing in the doorway with a broom in hand.

"Oluo says he's done with his room, he's just waiting for your inspection," she informed him, though the look on her face was enough to tell him he'd be telling Oluo to do it all over again as soon as he saw it.

"I'll do it when I'm finished," Levi answered, raising the cloth over his face and pulling out the brush to start scrubbing again. "Tell him to make _sure_ he's finished while he waits."

"Yes, Captain," Petra said with a small nod, turning to leave.

"Has L/N finished with her two rooms?" Levi asked before she could leave entirely, focused on a new spot of stone as he spoke instead of looking up at her.

"Yes, sir. She actually went outside, out front, to do some extra cleaning while she waited for you to be ready to inspect the rooms."

She was also really good at cleaning. She had to be, right? She'd lived below ground longer than he had, and her senses were extra sensitive. One bad smell must be torture for her, the dust probably setting off her sensitive nose with the slightest buildup, her sight probably making it easier to pick out grime, and her speed making her a faster cleaner than anyone here--when she didn't have to slow down because she was being watched by someone who didn't know what she was. No wonder she was so damn good at cleaning, why he hadn't found any flaws with it to date.

It almost felt like cheating to him, for some reason.

He pressed unnecessarily hard down on the brush again, feeling the bristles bend and strain slightly in the brush, his fingertips turning pale again.

"Tell her when she's finished with whatever she's doing right now to come up here," Levi told Petra, offering no more explanation as he continued scrubbing at the floor.

“Yes, sir.”

Petra left after that, and Levi focused on the room around him--his third room, mind you, and he was almost done. His hands were red, a little raw, too, but it wasn’t anything serious. He just kept getting lost in his thoughts while he was cleaning, and instead of calming down like he normally did when he cleaned, he’d tense up at those moments where he got lost in his thoughts. He was going over his attempt at a peace offering over and over again, well aware that he wasn’t the best...people person, that communication on a social or emotional level was _not_ his strong suit. But he was hoping the intention behind the gesture would be clear. She wasn’t an idiot--she was smart. There was a decent chance she’d be able to see what he was trying to do.

Hopefully.

Levi was just starting to finish up, finishing with a bit of polish on the metal in the room when L/N finally made her appearance, standing in the doorway with similar cleaning additions to her uniform as him, though she had an apron on that was currently tucked up and into her straps to keep any dirt from falling onto the floor while she walked.

She must have been doing some garden and yard work, then. Pulling weeds or something like that out front. At least she wasn’t tracking dirt everywhere, from what he could see--and his eyes were scanning her and her surroundings carefully to make sure she wasn’t about to ruin his hard work.

“You wanted to see me, Captain?” she asked formerly, keeping her gaze fixed on him instead of letting it wander around the room at anything _other_ than him.

That was a start, at least. He’d be worried this entire rebuilding the bridge thing wouldn’t work out well if she couldn’t even look him in the eyes.

But the tension was still there, thick and uncomfortable, enough to put even him on edge. There was a distance in her posture, a different kind of guarded than when he’d been snooping around and watching her every move. Like she was hyper-aware of what he was going to think of her moving forward.

He was still coming to a decision about that one, honestly.

“You’re going to start training with me,” Levi said with no lead up, causing her eyebrows to raise in surprise, opening her mouth like she was about to ask questions before she quickly closed it again, since he continued to talk as if her reaction didn’t phase him in the slightest or give him any kind of pause. “You’ve got some things to work on before the next expedition. Two lessons a day, sparring and ODM gear. Make sure you make the time for it.”

“Ah, Captain...I’m not sure if I... _should_ …” she said hesitantly, caught between obeying what was close to a command from her Captain and a reluctance to take him up on the lessons because...what, was the tension that bad for her that she didn’t think she could train with him? Did she not want to be _anywhere_ near him any more than she already was? Did she think she would make him uncomfortable? Did she not like the thought of being alone with him?

That was a viable concern, actually.

Or maybe she just thought there wasn’t anything he could teach her.

On the contrary--she’d said herself that she was having trouble with the ODM gear. She’d said one of her risks was that she reacted too fast for the gear to keep up with her, sometimes. That was a problem, especially in a situation where one needed to rely on instincts--how could you rely on instincts while also trying to muffle them to lower to the level of the gear, or nearby people?

She needed help finding the middle ground, or at least training herself to _instinctually_ pace herself so she _didn’t_ outpace the gear in an emergency. Like she’d pointed out herself, that kind of mistake could be the difference between life and death, even for her.

As for the sparring...well, the only people here that came close to matching their skills was each other. Who else were they going to spar besides each other? Besides, it would be refreshing to have someone he could actually go all out on that would be a _challenge_ for him. He was sure the same applied for her, now that she didn’t have to hold back to keep her secret hidden.

If that had been the reason she’d thrown the fight the first time they’d sparred.

Plus, all that raw strength and speed meant nothing if she didn’t know how to use it. He could still teach her things, show her some techniques she could use in a fight, that kind of thing.

Is offer to teach her was his way of offering an olive branch to her...and he didn’t take too kindly to her starting to turn down the offer.

Levi narrowed his eyes slightly at her as she continued to cast about for a solid excuse to turn him down. Most people here would kill for one on one lessons from him--a fact he was well aware of. Yet here she was, proving just how out of the ordinary she was as she seemed to be beyond just the _vampire_ thing, trying to weasel out of it. “What? Don’t think you have anything to learn because you’re so naturally _gifted_?” he asked in a jab much softer than his accusations during their interrogation.

“No, it’s just…” she started to say with a frustrated sigh, looking over her shoulder like she was looking at someone, even though no one was there. “Eld’s already giving me ODM gear lessons…”

Was that really it? He doubted it. Yes, Eld was teaching her a few things, Levi was aware, but it wasn’t the same as what Levi was offering to teach her. And it wasn’t a reason to turn him down in the first place. Just another excuse. Unless she was really worried about what the others would think if she got not only one daily private lesson with Levi, but two. As much as Levi was usually of the opinion “To hell what other people think,” this one he could see where she was coming from if it was the case. She’d just gotten the others to warm up to her despite their grumbling and cold shoulders after the _extremely_ green rookie got sped through all the tape and obstacles right into Levi’s Squad while they put in hard work and were hand picked by Levi after some time in the Scouts after displaying their own strengths and skills over a period of time. It must have looked like favoritism--and Levi giving her double private lessons wasn’t going to help anything.

It didn’t change the fact that she still needed them or could benefit from them. And that it was a way for them to start making amends...in a roundabout way.

“ODM techniques. Special maneuvers: team and solo, correct?” Levi asked, mostly rhetorically, though she still nodded in confirmation. Levi moved over to the table he was keeping his cleaning supplies on, starting to pack up his things so he could leave to start doing inspections of everyone’s designated rooms. “I’m not going to be teaching you what Eld is. You said you were having problems with reacting too fast for the gear, right?”

Levi spoke pointedly, giving her a sidelong glance so he could gauge her reaction and she could see he was serious about this--and that _he_ didn’t have any ulterior motives. She didn’t protest again. She still looked a little uncomfortable, possibly because of the bump this could cause with the others once they found out, maybe because it meant the two of them were going to be spending more time with one another and they were going to have to get over this tension between them really quickly if they didn’t want to end up at each other’s throats trying to kill each other, but she didn’t protest anymore.

“Four a.m. in the woods for hand to hand. Two hours before dinner on the training grounds for the ODM gear. Don’t be late,” Levi told her, taking his supplies and leaving her behind in the room as his way of dismissing her.

Now to go yell at Oluo for not getting his cleaning job done properly, most likely.


	11. Rumors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh yes…we’ve passed the discovery bump…now…relationship building.
> 
> Why not start off with a bang :P That in my defense, I feel like kind of makes perfect sense, considering animosity with past peers and what their arrangement might look like to outsides…especially outsiders with animosity… O.o
> 
> Also, yes, Hange eventually will be incorporated, just give me a bit, I’m slowly incorporating people XD

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

While the one on one training with Levi had not been at all what you were expecting when he pretty much ordered you to do it, it ended up being the most profitable training you’d had in a while. For one, you had someone you could actually _spar_ with, and despite his current status as undefeated among everyone else, he was taking his losses in your matches in stride. If he lost, he would at least have some critiques in techniques, or what move would have worked better in such and such position.

He seemed to be approaching with the logic of ‘just because you have superior strength and speed, doesn’t mean you’re _good_ ,’ and was focused on refining talent into skill.

As well as improve and refine his own abilities, perhaps. What better way than to repeatedly take on you, with your natural talents? He’d managed to pin you a few times already. You had the raw strength and speed, but his abilities weren’t that far behind, and he had the skill. He just needed a bit more knowledge on how to fight a vampire despite his disadvantages, and he’d probably be set.

Right now, the two of you were in the middle of a spar, hands flying in a quick back and forth of action and reaction, trying to get in a hit just to be parried, then trying to make that parry work to your advantage. A punch in towards the chest resulting in the arm getting pushed aside, just for that hand to grab at the arm that had pushed it, to pull and try to throw them off balance, a foot coming in to try and sweep the feet at the same time, resulting in a side step, moving behind to try and put them in a choke hold, just to have them duck under the arm and go for a quick jab between the ribs, abandoned when an elbow came flying through the air to crash where their head was at, the attacking arm raising instead in defense.

These kinds of quick and fluid movements were what made up most of your sparring session, both of you constantly trying to catch the other off guard and gain the upper hand, raw talent with some tempered skill against a skill forged in fire. Your heart pounded, excitement running unbridled in your veins now that you could have this spar without prying eyes, without having to hide the full extent of what you could do. Of course, this also let Levi get a better look at the extent of your abilities, but you didn’t pay that part much mind.

Your eyes caught something that wasn’t so much of an opening as it was an opportunity, something you could exploit as a vampire. Feeding off the thrill coursing through you, you took the opportunity, forcing your arm with your strength past his guard so your hand could grasp the front of his shirt, your other arm grasping somewhere that was much easier to reach as you went low. Levi realized what was about to happen and tried to shift his weight, to make it more difficult, or perhaps twist himself out of your grip, but you were already lifting him in a throw over your shoulder, taking care to make sure he landed on his _back_ and not his _head_ before you whipped around and attempted to pin him, your knee on his gut, a hand on his chest, your other hand pulled back ready for a finishing strike if this had been real.

Levi froze up underneath you, staring up at you with a hard glint in his eyes that didn’t match his usual defeat. There was even a spark of fear you hadn’t seen yet during these spars, and he seemed to tense like he was ready for a _real_ life or death struggle.

You were confused for a few moments, breathing coming a little shallower than normal–yes, even a vampire could get tired, the stamina wasn’t limitless–as you held his gaze, trying to figure out what was wrong, the hand raised for ‘attack’ having dropped on instinct to show less of a threat.

Your emotions. They were unbridled right now, all over the place, and channeled directly to the fight. Which meant he wasn’t just holding your gaze because he was staring you down. He had frozen because of your eyes.

You looked away, releasing him and backing up, feeling a rush of shame for giving him a scare like that, that you’d let yourself go that much that you weren’t even keeping control of your appearance. Maybe during the fight he could forget, even for a moment, but when he was pinned with your eyes glowing red and locked on yours, it was a harsh and alarming reminder of what you really were.

“Sorry,” you murmured, a hand rising to your cheek as you kept your face turned away, waiting until you had a firm hold of yourself again and you were certain that there wouldn’t be so much as a red _glint_ in your eyes when you did face him again.

You really hoped this little slip of yours wasn’t going to cost some of the trust that the two of you seemed to be building between each other with these training sessions. Maybe not trust specifically, maybe more of rapport, but at the same time, there was far more trust that went into this than you’d realized. These moments where you beat him, where you had him pinned…the two of you were alone in the woods, if something happened, no one would know, no one would be able to intervene. And when he lost, for those few moments, he was at your mercy. He might not be able to do anything if you lost control or simply decided to bite him one of these days. Yet he continued to carry on the lessons despite that possibility and the level of risk in having these training sessions be private. Then again, if they weren’t private, you couldn’t exactly _train_ as much as you could now.

“I thought you had control over your bloodlust?” Levi asked sharply as he got to his feet behind you, notes of that distrust you used to hear from him creeping back into his voice. You hadn’t heard it in a while, since the start of this training, so hearing them creep back in now…

“That wasn’t bloodlust,” you murmured, rubbing softly at your eyes and wishing you had a mirror to make sure the red was gone from them.

“When your eyes are red–” Levi started to argue, but you cut him off, turning to face him again since you were certain you had a clamp on your emotions again.

“That doesn’t just mean bloodlust. It happens for multiple reasons,” you corrected him, fighting to keep your voice from anger or impatience. You could understand the confusion, the only times he’d seen your eyes red had been in moments of bloodlust. Never the other moments. “Sometimes emotions running rampant can trigger it. Especially in the middle of a fight, because a vampire’s instincts are already riled in a fight. I could do it on command, I suppose, if I felt threatened or wanted to threaten–like when a cat’s hackles rise. It’s not…just bloodlust,” you finished in a murmur, looking away again.

Still, even if it had been a misunderstanding you’d just given Levi quite the scare in that moment. He might have thought you were a second away from _actually_ ripping his throat out or something similar.

As a way to make it up to him, you decided to take the position of teacher for a moment, while you were both letting the mood cool from that spark towards danger a few moments ago.

“Listen, when you’re fighting a vampire, it’s not about strength and speed, it’s about leverage and making each shot count,” you started to say, pushing hair out of your face as you explained semi-nervously in lieu of an apology for giving him a scare like that. “I’m far from the strongest vampire out there. Even your strength and speed is only going to get you closer to even footing with them, you’ll still have to be smart about it. Get them off their feet, stun them, go in for what would normally be a kill shot if you’re close enough and they’re not expecting it. Even if you know it won’t kill them permanently and they’ll come back, it will put them down long enough to escape…or find something to properly kill them with.”

You didn’t know why you decided to suddenly make this a lesson about killing vampires, but here you were, information running out of you like water from the spout.

“And if you’re in a really bad spot, and they’ve already got their teeth in you…make them choke up. Got for the throat. Especially right here…” you touched a spot on your upper throat that made you feel strange just touching it with a bit of pressure, and then a little lower, closer to the base of the throat, where some pressure made you feel like you might throw up. “Or here. At the very least, it should get their fangs out of you. But with a vampire, it’s all about fighting smarter, not harder–like when you fight someone much larger than yourself.”

Levi studied you for a moment, the on guard position he’d been holding draining from his body as he slowly relaxed in front of you, nodding to himself as he made his way back to the center of the clearing that acted as your starting position.

“We’re not here to train _me_. We’re here for _you_. Keep a hold of yourself and I won’t _have_ to do anything,” Levi said, falling into an at the ready stance, hands up in front of him as he waited for you to approach so you could resume your training.

* * *

The other half of your personal training with Levi happened the same way every day. Namely, he had you run the same maneuver at the exact same pace over and over and over again, until it all became muscle memory–pace included. The theory was that if the pace could be ingrained into your muscle memory, then you wouldn’t accidentally execute it too quickly for the gear to keep up when you acted on instinct in the field. And, just so your abilities could still come into play and help with your execution, the first thing you did with every maneuver was figure out how fast you could pull it off without breaking the gear. After that, you walked it back a step or two in speed so you didn’t strain the gear and wear it out too quickly, but you were still able to pull off the maneuver with startling speed.

While those practices were much of the same, with you doing it over and over under Levi’s supervision and occasionally learning a new move from him at the start so that he was still teaching you, they were arguably more exhaustive than the morning training–at least mentally. Levi didn’t have to do much except observe, so he didn’t look remotely bothered while you would look exhausted when you entered the mess hall to eat afterwards.

Since you two would come from the same place, and would usually enter when almost everyone else had received their food, you would end up in the line together, though Levi’s tray always wound up looking different from yours. Because he was an officer, plus he was actually eating the food while you were strategically picking things you could pawn off on the horses or birds and squirrels later.

“Are you even going to eat half of that?” Levi asked critically. You both knew you didn’t need to eat, so the rations were kind of wasted on you, but you needed to keep up appearances, and what you _did_ eat would help with cravings.

“Most of it is bribes for the horses. Namely yours. I think he likes me now, but he might feel betrayed if I don’t give him a treat with everyone else,” you teased him with a soft smile on your face, tossing an apple up into the air before putting it back where it belonged.

Levi rolled his eyes. “Stop bribing my horse, he’s going to get fat,” Levi grumbled, pushing on with his tray.

It was nice that you could tease and joke with him now, even if it was just the brief, lighthearted stuff. He really was making an effort to be more accepting with you. When you weren’t dragging the vampire stuff front and center, you could almost say he was comfortable around you.

Of course, until something reminded him what you were, or you talked about it, and he was on edge again. He was going to need much more time to come to terms with the vampire side of you. There was too much about it that made him uncomfortable and ill at ease. That wasn’t something he would be able to get over just by spending more time around you–that was going to take some time and reflection of his own.

As you followed behind Levi in the line up, you spaced out slightly, listening in on some of the conversations going on around the mess hall, ranging from sore muscles from training today, to an upcoming shipment of fresh supplies, to how bad the food tasted. And then, through all the meaningless chit-chat, something caught your attention.

_“…definitely sleeping with Captain Levi.”_

You paused, centering in on that one conversation, a bad pit in your stomach.

_“Are you kidding me? Captain Levi’s hardly the type.”_

_“I’m sorry, do you know anything about him? Nobody really does, other than his irritable attitude and his reputation. For all you know, he **is** the type. And I’ll bet he is. There’s no way she’s climbed the ranks that fast unless she’s climbed on someone’s dick along the way, I don’t care how skilled she is.”_

_“That’s foul.”_

_“It’s true! There’s advancing because of your skill, and then there’s going from a fresh recruit to part of the elite squad in a couple **days** , to **private lessons with Captain Levi** not long after. We’ve **just** gotten placed in Squads and **barely** started training with the squads. And it’s a position they literally made up so she could be **in** Levi squad. That’s **beyond** favoritism. I’ll bet you when they come out of those woods every morning all sweaty and flushed and tired, it’s after she’s given him a good fuck to get on his good side.”_

_“Maybe they’re just sparring–hand to hand lessons…” someone else suggested weakly._

_“If it was a spar they could do it on the training grounds like everyone else. What they’re doing they have to hide. They get up so early so no one will see what they’re up to, and I’ll bet that means they’re out there for hours. It’s gotta be one hell of a blowjob she gives, that’s for sure.”_

“Hey–what’s that look for?”

You snapped yourself out of the revolted and disturbed focus you’d found yourself in at Levi’s more immediate sounding voice trying to get your attention, eyes focusing on him as, for a moment, you found yourself at a loss of words for what to say to him after hearing… _that_.

And he had no clue. Because besides the people /in/ that conversation, you’d been the only one to hear it.

He looked concerned, maybe even worried, his mind probably coming up with a bunch of worst-case-scenarios for what you felt or heard that gave you whatever expression you currently had.

You shook your head, sliding your tray to the side to get him to keep moving or else risk their trays crashing into each other with the contents spilling everywhere. “I heard something I did _not_ want to hear. Just keep going,” you said dismissively, trying to brush it off as someone having a roll in the hay in the stables or a quickie in the supply closet–whatever kept him from even getting a hint of what you actually heard.

If it was just your reputation they were trashing, maybe you wouldn’t mind so much–you knew it wasn’t true, that it was as far from the truth as they could get. What made it _really_ worry you was how it also dug at Levi’s reputation. Maybe he wouldn’t care, but maybe he would. You hoped if the rumor reached the rest of Levi’s squad, that they wouldn’t believe it. They knew Levi better than most people here, _surely_ they’d know it wasn’t true? But you could also see how that was a rumor that would burn like fire through the ranks.

Behind Levi’s back as he continued down through the line, that worried look lingered in your eyes, wondering if you should do something about the rumor, or just leave it alone. Normally you would just leave it alone, but this one seemed…insidious to you. Or at least, you didn’t like the thought of people spreading it further, even if you knew the people that mattered knew better, or might know better.

You ended up breaking away from the line before Levi did, heading for the table that the squad usually sat at and trying to shake off the concerns and worries eating at you in the back of your mind, giving them a shy smile as you took the seat next to Petra.

“So, newbie–private training with the Captain, already? Someone moves fast,” Oluo said conspiratorially before you could even sit down.

Had they already heard that damn rumor? Was it already making its way through the ranks and you just hadn’t heard it yet?

“Oluo, don’t be an ass,” Petra scolded him in answer. “And she’s not much of a newbie anymore.”

“She’s a newbie until she’s been out on a few expeditions, Petra,” Gunther commented.

“Whatever–you’re really getting private lessons with the Captain? Two a day, from what I hear?” Oluo asked, cutting past the debate over whether or not you were a newbie.

“It would explain where you disappear to in the mornings and just before dinner,” Eld added quietly from where he _usually_ just observed these back and forths between you, Eld, and Petra.

“None of us get one on one training with Captain Levi,” Oluo stressed, leaning forward in his seat. “How’d you do it?”

At that moment, Levi appeared at the head of the table, setting down his tray with an agitated sigh. “She needs _someone_ to kick her ass into the dirt every now and then,” Levi said simply in answer to the debate bouncing around you.

Petra turned to look at you with a slightly apologetic look on her face. “You _are_ pretty infuriating to spar with.”

“So I’ve been told,” you answered, feeling yourself start to relax again as the conversation started to drift into what you considered safer waters.

“Sometimes, I swear you’re _letting_ us win,” Gunther added, clearly agreeing with Petra on that matter.

“Because she is,” Levi said bluntly from the head of the table. You gave him a sharp look that clearly asked why the fuck was he outing you, but he didn’t even glance in your direction as the rest of the table fell awkwardly silent. “It’s why she trains with me in the mornings–she needs a tougher opponent.”

You blushed, feeling the attention shifting to you. “I wouldn’t put it that way,” you muttered under your breath, worried it might come off as Levi suggesting the other four weren’t good enough to spar with her, that they weren’t at her level, that she needed someone who actually presented a challenge.

All of those could be taken rather insultingly, considering you were apparently still new enough to be considered a newbie by most of the squad.

Levi held your gaze from across the table. “How about next time you spar with them, you don’t hold back and let them see for themselves.”

_“Put that effort into sparring with your comrades, and they might learn something.”_

The first thing he’d ever tried to teach you, back when he’d first encountered you.

You nodded, deciding not to question his judgement on this. He knew the other members of the squad better than you did. And not he was aware of your secret and could properly assess risks. You were going to trust his judgement on this one, despite your own confusion or reservations.

“Yes, sir,” you said with a nod, turning back to the food in front of you with a slightly thoughtful frown.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

After shooing Y/N away from taking care of the horses like she usually did, Levi was spending some much needed time with his horse, brushing down the black steed’s coat and gently rubbing his neck, forehead, and muzzle–whichever he could reach.

“You’re putting on a bit of weight,” Levi remarked lowly, eyes roaming over his horse’s frame. “If she’s going to give you so many treats, she could at least make sure you get the exercise to keep from gaining the weight…”

The horse just snorted and tossed his head, settling back down when Levi gave him a disapproving look before Levi continued brushing him, taking a moment to let the sound of the horses moving around and nickering softly in the stables soothe him away from the bustle of the Scout’s headquarters.

The stable door opened, and Levi glanced out the stall to see who it was, half expecting it to be Y/N again and for him to have to shoo her away _again_ so he could have quiet time with his horse.

It was Petra, actually, and she went right by the stall that her horse was kept in and made a beeline for where Levi was standing by the entrance to his horse’s stall.

“Captain, I need to talk to you about something,” she said seriously, a flush of nervousness coloring her cheeks as she came to a stop in front of him. Levi’s eyebrows rose at her demeanor, but he didn’t say anything, intending for her to continue without further prompting from him.

“There’s a rumor that’s been going around…”

Levi snorted softly, turning back to his horse. “You know I don’t give a damn about what’s going through the gossip chain for the week.”

“I know, and normally I wouldn’t say anything, but…this one’s pretty bad. And it’s only getting more out of hand. And I thought I should give you a warning before someone tries to do something about it.”

That caught his attention. People throwing rumors around was one thing. A nasty rumor that could stir people to action, though, that was something that he might want to give a bit of attention to. And considering Petra was coming to him about it as a warning, it involved him.

“People have been saying that Y/N has been getting her promotions and placements by sleeping with superior officers…namely you, and that it’s still going on right now. Now, the rest of the squad and I don’t believe it, but there are some people who believe it’s true to the point they’re planning on bringing their concerns to Erwin,” Petra told him nervously, the slight shake in her voice getting worse when Levi’s expression darkened considerably.

That was quite an accusation. And apparently one people were believing enough to try and take action about. But to think some people would believe he was actually the type to be bought with sexual favors.

Well, actually, he was used to people thinking lowly of him, but this was a line he’d thought it was clear he wasn’t ever going to cross–either falling into the trap of accepting sexual favors in return for promotions, or exploiting someone in a lower position for them. It was a filthy rumor, and Petra was right, this was one he preferred to have a heads up on so he could do something to shoot them down before they got any further.

This wasn’t a rumor that could be combated with words–no one was going to believe it no matter how insistent Y/N or he got, but maybe, at least for a little while, if it was more out in the open that they were just training, and it was for good reason, maybe it would help abate the rumors.

Maybe _letting_ them go to Erwin was a good idea. Erwin knew what was actually happening–hell, Levi gave him regular reports on her progress, since the man wanted to keep a close eye on his new asset while he decided how best to use her in the grand scheme of his goals. Then again, Erwin might have to be forced to investigate anyway, considering the seriousness of the claims, even if they both knew it was just a nasty rumor that had gone too far. And Levi and Y/N were spending plenty of time alone and out of the public eye where no one knew what could be happening–besides the three who knew exactly what was happening, but their witness wasn’t there, physically.

Petra was watching his reaction in tense anticipation, staring at him as his eyes roamed around at something only he could see, considering his options and how best to handle the situation. He went back to his horse, giving the almost perfectly shining coat another few brushes before he answered.

“Thank you, Petra. I’m sure if it does get to Erwin, he’ll know better–he knows what I’ve been training her on and when, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem. But if it does become one, it’ll blow over,” Levi reassured her, exuding an outward demeanor of calm after deciding on a few minor moves to help dispel the rumors.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

About a week after you had overheard the rumor in the mess hall, and well aware that the rumor was only getting worse, Levi called you into his office to discuss that very rumor. Apparently, Petra had told him about it, including the lovely fact that there was a group that was going to go to Erwin to have him take action about it like it was possibly true. Besides letting you know that he knew, the only thing Levi was requesting that they do in order to try and combat some of the rumors, was to move their just-before dinner training with the ODM gear onto the training field so there were witnesses that they were just training, and at least once in the upcoming days, the two of you were going to do your hand to hand training on the training field where there were witnesses to see that you actually did need to train with him for the sparring.

You would, of course, have to refrain from doing something openly vampiric, even though normally during your morning spars you could cut loose, but the two of you sparring and being rather evenly matched would probably be plenty of evidence to show that you had earned your spot on Levi’s squad (Even if the circumstances had been unique).

However, something about him going to these lengths sort of bugged you. You understood how serious it would become once people took it to Erwin, but at the same time…

“Thank you, Captain Levi, but…you don’t have to do any of this for me just because of some rumors. I don’t really care what they think of me,” you said hesitantly. The only people that mattered were the ones that didn’t believe the rumors, from what you were aware. It was mostly people who had some kind of a grudge against you from the training cadets or simply out of jealousy that were pushing it further than just a rumor and willing to actually believe you and Levi were the kind of people to be doing something like that.

“What makes you think I’m doing this for _you_?” he asked, possibly a little sharper than he’d intended.

He had a point, though. This didn’t just hurt your reputation, it could hurt his credibility as well if it made it to the point of a legitimate investigation, whether the two of you were cleared or not. No one would forget that there had been enough to question him, that he had still been investigated for accepting sexual favors, whether it had been true or not. You were both in the same boat in this mess. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to normally care about petty rumors, but this one was going too far.

“Okay then…but on one condition,” you said firmly, sitting up in your seat. Levi leaned back, studying you for a moment, looking a little confused that you even had a _condition_ for going along with trying to clear your names up even a little from these rumors. “No matter how the spar goes, you have to be the one to win it when we’re in front of everyone.”

Levi stared you down for several long minutes, the silence almost getting painful as he seemed to be trying to read you, to glean why this was your condition, why you were so insistent about it. Maybe he was also thinking back to how you’d thrown your first match with him even though you were about to win, and how that one had been in front of everyone…while you had never thrown a fight when it was just the two of you, and you’d even beaten him a few times.

“Why is it so important to you that you lose to me when we’re in front of everyone?” he finally asked.

“The same reason I threw the fight when we met. You’re Humanity’s Strongest. I know it might not even matter to you, but it does to me. I don’t want that title, I don’t deserve it–I’m not even human. You do–deserve the title, I mean. I can’t take it, I refuse to, even if it’s bestowed by people who don’t know any better.” You licked your lips, heaving a soft and somewhat tired sigh. “That’s why you can’t let me win when it’s not just the two of us. I can’t even risk the thought entering their minds that you’re not Humanity’s Strongest anymore, because that’s not true. Not that they’d ever know.”

“I really don’t give a damn about whatever title they want to try and fit me with,” Levi said, his voice surprisingly not betraying anything about what he thought–not yet, anyway.

“But I do. I hate to sound superficial, but it does matter to me that you stay the one they see as Humanity’s Strongest, and it doesn’t get passed on to me. So that’s my condition. You have to win the spar at the end.”

Levi nodded slowly, getting to his feet. “All right, then. I’ll win the spar,” he agreed, gesturing for the door. “I’d invite you to have some tea with all this shit going on, but we probably shouldn’t be spending any more time by ourselves until this whole mess blows over.”

“Of course,” you said, getting to your feet and ready to leave. You paused by the door, turning to look at him. “And Captain…”

He looked up from where he was getting his jacket off the chair, looking at you expectantly.

“Thank you. For training me, and…giving me a chance. Despite everything,” you said, feeling awkwardness drip into your tone and a blush color your cheeks before you hurriedly left the room, shutting the door before you could see his reaction or he had the chance to answer with a snarky or sharp reply.


End file.
